All Hat

by Brad Smith

  “What do you think?” Sonny asked impatiently.

  Jackson was still looking at his roses. “I think I got too much to do than sit around talking about races that haven’t been run by a horse that hasn’t been born.”

  Sonny looked at him and smiled. “Jack, Jack … you got the weight of the whole world on your shoulders, don’t you? When you gonna learn to relax?”

  Jackson turned at the sound of the front door opening. “I figure you do enough relaxing around here for the both of us.”

  Earl Stanton walked out onto the porch then, burdened down by several pieces of mauve-colored luggage that was clearly not his own. He was wearing creased cotton pants and a pullover, the casual attire he’d adopted since remarrying. His gray hair was cropped short, and he was lean and angular; only the stiffness of his gait betrayed his years. A limo was parked in the yard, the trunk open, and he headed for it.

  The owner of the baggage emerged a moment later. Gena was wearing tight capri pants and high-heeled mules. She had her shades perched atop her blond hair, and she was looking suspiciously younger than she had before she’d left for New York a month earlier. Her yappy miniature poodle was tucked under her arm. She showed Jackson the pained acknowledging smile she reserved for those in servitude and then, looking neither left nor right, stepped down from the porch and headed for the car. She somehow managed a goal line fumble, though, and soon the poodle was running around the yard, barking crazily like the inbred it was. Jackson watched as Earl chased the animal down, his face barely concealing the contempt in which he held the dog, and finally deposited the mutt back into the limo, where Gena was smoking a cigarette and shouting instructions.

  Earl was breathing heavily when he came back to the porch to talk to Jackson. “Damn dog,” he said in dismissal and then: “I still don’t know about running the Flash in the Queen Anne. I want him tip-top for the Breeders’.”

  “He needs the work,” Jackson said. “Horse has got to run.”

  “Ah, Jack,” Sonny interjected, “he’s just afraid we’ll put the saddle on backward with him not around to show us.”

  Earl gave Sonny a sharp look, then turned back to Jackson. “Well, just make sure he’s sound.”

  “I still can’t figure you missing the race,” Jackson said.

  Earl grimaced as if he were passing a stone and indicated the limo. “Oh, she’s got some big shindig happening down in the islands. Her fashion friends.”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to miss that, Earl.”

  “Shit,” Earl said.

  “Don’t worry, Pop,” Sonny said from the chair. “If the Flash breaks a leg, we’ll just prop him up on crutches and stand him to stud.”

  This time Earl never even turned toward Sonny, who was still sitting in the wicker chair.

  “Take care of my horse, Jack,” Earl said, and he stuck out his hand. “And I’ll see you in New York.”

  The limo pulled out of the yard as the Lincoln was driving in. Dean was wearing shades and trying hard to appear sober as he and Paulie piled out of the car. Sonny came down off the porch and limped over.

  “Where you clowns been?”

  “In town,” Jackson said, and he looked at Dean to let him know that he wouldn’t rat them out. It wasn’t out of friendship, though, Dean knew. To Jackson, they weren’t even worthy of the effort.

  “We were in the Slamdance,” Dean told Sonny. “Drinking Scotch whiskey with an angel named Misty. A rack like Pammy Anderson. Right, Paulie?”

  Paulie never said a word, just stood there, his eyes on the ground.

  “I want you to take that roan up to the Double B in London to get her bred,” Jackson said. “They’re waiting for her.”

  “What stud?” Dean asked.

  “River Ridge,” Jackson said.

  “Roy Gowling’s got that good stallion just down the road,” Dean said “You know the one, out of Sky Classic. You could breed her there.”

  Sonny smiled. “Lenny and Squiggy gonna take over the breeding around here?”

  “No, and neither are you,” Jackson said. “You two get that mare loaded and get her up to London. I’m driving in to Woodbine, to see to the Flash. Sonny, you can go sit on the porch and smoke your cigar and do whatever it is you do all day.”

  * * *

  The roan mare bolted when they were loading her, slamming Dean against the trailer wall and then running off across the yard. Jackson, afraid that she would head for the highway, called to Paulie inside the barn. The mare was standing on the grass of the lawn, snorting loudly, her ears back, when Paulie came out. He began to talk to her, and as he approached her head seemed to drop a quarter inch with each step he took, and then her ears came forward. When he reached her she nuzzled him like a dog, and he took her by the halter and led her into the trailer without a hitch.

  It was three o’clock by the time Dean and Paulie hit the 401, Dean behind the wheel of the Ford Crewcab, the single trailer behind. Paulie fell asleep before they reached Kitchener. Dean stopped for coffee at a BP station, checked to see that the cantankerous mare was still on her feet, then set out again.

  Dean was getting plenty tired of his situation with his uncle Earl. Of course, Earl wasn’t really his uncle. Dean’s mother had been Earl’s first cousin, and when Dean had had a little trouble with the law—stealing cars, selling grass; trumped-up charges in Dean’s mind, despite the fact that he was guilty of them all—Earl had agreed to hire Dean as a kind of gofer. The judge always looked more favorably on a man who could attest to gainful employment, and Earl’s generosity had kept Dean out of jail. Of course, for Dean it was mostly a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Maybe Earl did have a fine sense of familial responsibility, but he was getting some cheap labor out of the deal.

  Paulie was another story. He was Earl’s true nephew—his mother was Earl’s sister. She’d never married and had died in Montreal in a flophouse with needle marks up both arms. Maybe it was foul play, and maybe it wasn’t; apparently, she wasn’t someone the cops cared enough about to investigate. Paulie never knew his father—knew nothing of the circumstances of his mother’s union with the man. Whatever the circumstances, the result of that union led Dean to believe that the man was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

  But Paulie had a way with horses that bordered on spooky, and he was a good man at the end of a shovel. Dean couldn’t say the same for himself. He’d started out cleaning stables for the old man, then passed through a procession of menial jobs, proving himself to be ill-suited to each. Whenever he’d made an effort to assert himself, he’d been knocked back on his heels by Jackson or Sonny.

  Now Dean was just spinning his wheels, baby-sitting Paulie and running whatever errands Jackson considered to be beneath his station. And Dean was getting sick of it. He was thirty years old, being treated like a teenager.

  Paulie woke up a few miles east of London. It was near dark now, and they were sandwiched in among the countless tractor trailers that crawled the 401 like caterpillars. Dean hated being in their midst; they stirred in him a raging claustrophobia never evident elsewhere. He had a need to see where he was going, to have a horizon to aim for. Otherwise, he feared that he was standing still.

  “Why’d you tell that girl your name was Dino?” Paulie was asking now.

  “What?”

  “That girl Misty, at Slamdance. You told her your name was Dino.”

  Dean shrugged. “I like it. I might even change it, down at the courthouse. Dino is a cool name; it commands respect, you know. It’s an Italian thing.”

  “You ain’t Italian.”

  “It’s a fucking attitude. You don’t understand shit, Paulie. That’s your problem.”

  Paulie yawned. “Least I know my name.”

  * * *

  They reached the stables at shortly past eight. Dean got out and shook the stiffness from his joints. The place didn’t measure up to the Stanton farm, but it was a pretty nice spread just the same. There were two barns, red wit
h gray roofs, and a series of interconnecting paddocks that ran behind and to the east. The house itself was a two-story stucco, with porches across the front and one side.

  There was an older guy waiting for them; he had a steel gray brush cut and long sideburns, and he said his name was Jim Burnside. Paulie thought that was pretty cool, having a name that fit the way you looked.

  Paulie unloaded the mare, and they tucked her away in a stall in a small barn off the main building. Jim tossed in a sheaf of hay and filled a water pail.

  “You guys sticking around?” he asked.

  “When you gonna breed her?” Dean asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, I’d guess,” Jim said. “Have to wait for the boss. He likes to run the show himself. She might have to stay a couple days.”

  “Where’s the stallion?”

  “River Ridge? He’s over to the other place. Can’t have him around here, with the mares in season. He’d kick the fucking walls down.”

  “Well, we got no plans,” Dean said.

  “Then let’s get a drink,” Jim said.

  There was a country-and-western bar in a mall a couple miles away. They sat at the bar, and Jim and Dean ordered rye and water, Paulie, a beer.

  “How long you been with Stanton?” Jim asked.

  “A while now,” Dean told him. “I handle a lot of the breeding stock. I picked your stud River Ridge for this mare; I figure it’s a good match.”

  Paulie snorted into his beer. Dean shot him a look.

  “Paulie helps me out, with the loading and transport, that kind of thing,” Dean said.

  Paulie nodded. “You tell him, Dino,” he said, and he slid off the stool, walked to a video machine along the wall. Dean watched him a moment, then signaled to the bartender: “Two more.”

  “So what’s he like, Earl Stanton?” Jim asked, reaching real quick for the fresh drink. He was a thirsty man, it seemed.

  “He’s all right.”

  “He’s sure been the big dog the past couple years, here and in the States both. That Jumping Jack Flash has gotta be the best four-year-old in North America. They got him at the home farm?”

  “We got him at Woodbine right now. Running that big race on Sunday.”

  “Fucker can run. The old man can pick a horse.”

  Dean took a drink, turned to watch the waitress’s ass as she walked past. He felt his anger come up. “Yeah, well it helps when you’re sitting on half a billion dollars. You buy a hundred colts every spring; one of ’em’s bound to be a keeper. Fucking nags are just a hobby to him. He makes all his dough with the electronics and the other shit. He could lose ten million a year on the horses, win a couple big races, and he’s happy. Ten million’s nothing to him; shit, I bet he’s spent that much bailing his little boy out over the years.”

  “Sonny? Yeah, I heard some stories.”

  “Well, I’m betting they’re all true. Sonny’s got a real problem with women. Never convicted, though. They don’t convict multimillionaires. You or me, we’d be dog meat.”

  “Spoiled rich kid, eh?”

  “Yeah.” Dean reached for his smokes, lit up. He was done with the subject. He turned to look at Paulie playing the machine along the wall. Simpleminded fuck, Dean thought. Must be nice, on a certain level. But then, where would he ever go, what would he ever have?

  “What’s the stud fee on River Ridge?” he asked, turning back.

  “Fifty.”

  “Goddamn it,” Dean said. “What a life. Do nothing but fuck; fifty grand a pop.”

  Jim laughed. “It’s not like the horse gets the money.”

  “He gets the fucking.”

  “Why they breeding that mare this time of year, anyway?”

  “I think they bred her in February, and she didn’t catch.” Dean shrugged. “Maybe the old man wants to see if she’s barren. She’s never foaled, that I know of.”

  “The Ridge will take care of her. He’s damn near perfect in that area; that’s why you’re paying fifty grand.”

  “Fucking horse sperm’s worth more than gold, you know that?” Dean said in wonderment. “What a racket.”

  They got a little drunk, and then Jim said they could sleep over at his place. They followed him out into the country, north of the town, where he lived in a tumble-down frame farmhouse, beside a weathered barn with half the windows broken or boarded up.

  Paulie crashed on the couch right away, and Dean and Jim sat up and had another drink, sitting in the kitchen.

  “You know,” Jim said after a time, his voice thick with rye. “A man could make a lot of money with one of these topnotch studs. In a month, you could make enough to retire.”

  “How would you do it?” Dean asked.

  “Well—there’d be some way. I mean, you got a product—it’d just be a matter of selling it. There’s plenty of buyers out there. Guys who wouldn’t ask questions.”

  “You know these guys?”

  “You betcha I know ’em.”

  * * *

  Sonny had watched the drama surrounding the loading of the roan mare from the house, waiting for the Percodan to gain the upper hand on his hangover. Five minutes after the trailer left the yard, he gathered his car keys and put on his coat. The mail was on the kitchen table; before he left the house he picked up the gas bill and put it in his inside pocket. Then he drove over to Holden County.

  The farm was a fifty-acre piece, with a sugar bush at the back that produced maple syrup and a large vegetable garden in the field beside the house. When Sonny pulled up, the old man was in the field, picking the last of the season’s tomatoes and placing them gently in a hamper basket. Sonny got out of the car and relit his cigar as he walked across the lawn. Passing the house, he could see the old woman inside, her head framed in the kitchen window. When Sonny waved, she didn’t wave back.

  The old man was wearing coveralls and a straw hat—like a farmer in a movie, Sonny thought—and he watched Sonny nervously as he approached.

  “Hey there,” Sonny said.

  “Hello.”

  “Still got tomatoes, I see.”

  “Just about the end of them,” the old man said, and he straightened up.

  “Well, everything comes to an end,” Sonny told him, and he smiled. He glanced at the house. “My man Rock tells me you’re thinking of backing out of our deal.”

  “Well,” the old man said slowly. “I’ve had second thoughts.”

  “But we had a deal.”

  “Well, there was nothing signed. I just been thinking—I don’t know that I’m ready to retire. And the old girl doesn’t think she wants to move after all.”

  Sonny walked along the row of plants. He stopped and turned over a large ripe tomato with the toe of his Topsider. “Now that’s a shame,” he said. “Because we had a deal.” He crushed the tomato beneath his heel.

  “See here,” the old man protested.

  “No, you see here.” Sonny took the gas bill from his pocket and showed the back of the envelope to the old man. “This is from my lawyer. You’re in breach of promise, Methuselah. I pay my lawyer a lot of money to make sure guys like you keep your word. And he tells me that all I have to do is sue your ass, and there’s a good chance that I’ll get this farm for nothing. So this is working out real good for me. I’m not so sure about you and the missus.”

  The old man stood silently, his eyes on the splattered tomato in the dirt, as if it was the source of his dismay. “There was nothing signed,” he said again.

  “You telling me your word is no good?” Sonny asked. “I thought that was a big deal to you people.”

  “You got a lot of nerve,” the old man said, and he took a step toward Sonny. Sonny raised his cane instinctively. The man looked plenty strong in spite of his years.

  “It’s your choice,” Sonny said, and he shrugged. “Maybe you should fight it in court. You got a good lawyer? My guy’s a fucking maniac; I swear you could cut him with a chain saw and he wouldn’t bleed. But you do what your conscience dictates.
”

  Sonny turned and walked back across the field, taking care to step on as many tomatoes as he could. The old man watched as Sonny backed the BMW onto the lawn and then drove out of the driveway. Then he walked slowly to the house.

  5

  The Augustine auction was to begin at ten in the morning. Ray rode over with Pete Culpepper in the pickup, arriving at half past nine. It was to be a huge auction, with three auctioneers: one to handle the furniture, antiques, and other sundry household items; another for the machinery and the real estate; and a third for the livestock, which consisted of not only a dozen thoroughbreds but also a herd of Charolais cattle.

  The horses were turned out in the paddock along the barn, and each wore a hackamore with a number on it for identification purposes. They were mostly broodmares, although there were a couple of geldings still running at Woodbine.

  And the colt that had so recently become the apple of Pete’s eye.

  He was a good-looking horse, dark bay, tall, and not yet as big across the chest and shoulders as his configuration promised. He was standing away from the other horses, watching the crowd with wide intelligent eyes, his ears forward. Pete Culpepper was doing his best to study him while pretending not to.

  “See anybody else looking at him?” he asked Ray after a while.

  “Pete, there’s two hundred people here. How the hell am I supposed to know where everybody’s looking?”

  “I just wish the sonofabitch didn’t look so healthy,” Pete said. “Too bad he wouldn’t pick up a stone and limp a little.”

  “Want me to go kick him in the shin?”

  Pete looked at Ray, thinking. “No, somebody’s bound to see you.”

  The machinery and the cattle and the household items went on the block first. It would be after lunch before the horses and real estate went up. Pete and Ray found a place to stand in the sun along the barn wall and wait.

  * * *

  Sonny picked up Dan Rockwood, and the two of them drove out to the sale together. On the way they stopped at the village of Cook’s Station, although it was hardly a village at all anymore, just an intersection of side roads, a cluster of buildings, a gas station, and the remains of the old train depot. Even the tracks were gone—pulled up a few years earlier and sold off for scrap. Rockwood—the Rock to his friends—motioned for Sonny to pull over when they arrived.