by Lincoln Cole
“This is where the trainers watch.”
“That’s stupid,” Rickie said. “How can they see anything over here?”
“The other side is for the fans,” said his mother.
“We normally watch from up there,” he said, pointing to the grandstand. “You always get us seats.”
“We can’t afford them right now,” Emily replied quietly.
“But I can’t see,” he said.
“Wait for your father to get here,” Emily replied with a sigh, rocking baby Jason in her arms. The little monster had started crying a few minutes earlier and wouldn’t stop. He was probably hungry.
Rickie’s stomach grumbled. So was he. “I’m still hungry,” he said.
She sighed. “After the race we can eat,” she said.
“Promise?”
She smiled down at him. “Promise.”
Calvin appeared behind Rickie and lifted him into the air. Rickie let out a sudden squeal at the motion before being set on his father’s shoulders. “Who’s ready to watch a horse race?” Calvin asked.
“Me!” Rickie said.
“Me too,” Calvin said with a chuckle. “And if Mountaineer wins, we all get to go to the winner’s circle and get our picture taken.”
“Calvin,” Emily said, her voice pleading. She grabbed his arm. “If he doesn’t win…”
“Please just shut up,” Calvin said, his voice hard. It was the voice he got when he was mad. Something that didn’t happen very often. There were cracks in his calm exterior, and when he looked over at Emily his eyes were haunted. “You think I don’t know we need him to win?”
Emily looked unhappy, but she didn’t say anything else.
The horses lined up behind the gate and the announcer blared over the speakers. Rickie idly twirled his dad’s hair from his high post, watching the horses fall into position behind the gate. It gradually built up speed.
The gate broke and the horses thinned out into a line. Rickie could hear shouting from the grandstand and the thud, thud, thud from the horse’s hooves. They blended together into a steady pressure on his ear drums.
Mountaineer ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack. Rickie couldn’t tell exactly which one was Mountaineer. From a distance they all looked alike. “Where is he?”
“Sitting fourth?” Calvin answered. “The one with blue colors.”
“Is that good?”
“It is fine,” Calvin replied. He turned his attention back to the race and pumped his fist. “Come on, Mountaineer.”
“Come on, Mountaineer,” Rickie echoed, pumping his fist.
The horses rounded the backstretch, packed tightly together. The thundering hooves washed over the gathered onlookers on the backstretch, followed by a rush of air. It smelled of dirt mixed with the smell of horse sweat and rough leather.
“Come on, Mountaineer,” Rickie shouted. His voice was drowned out by the voices of other trainers and owners all around him. People shouting for their horse to win. They didn’t know what Rickie knew. He knew his horse was going to win. And then he would get to go to the winner’s circle and get his picture taken. That was his favorite part. “Come on!”
The pack of horses moved into the final turn, spreading out into a line four wide in the stretch. There was a split in the rolling gray clouds overhead, bathing the track in sunlight.
Mountaineer worked up alongside the leaders, powering past them to take the lead. His powerful muscles rolled and his legs pumped across the dirt, kicking up pieces of sand and gravel.
He took the lead. Two lengths. Three out ahead. He left the pack behind. “Come on, Mountaineer!” Calvin, Emily, and Rickie all shouted. “Come on, you can do it!”
He was out front, unstoppable on his charge down the stretch.
And then he faltered.
Calvin stopped shouting.
One length lead.
Rickie felt his father’s shoulders slump beneath him.
Then Mountaineer was passed by, slipping further into the pack. When the horses crossed the finish line Mountaineer was trailing at sixth.
A moment of stunned silence passed. Calvin didn’t speak. Emily didn’t speak. Rickie scrunched his face up in confusion. He watched the horses pull up into the turn after the race, unsure exactly what had happened. “Did he win?” he asked.
“No,” Emily said after a brief hesitation.
“Then what happened?”
This time neither parent responded. Calvin reached up and gently set Rickie on the ground. There was a stunned expression on his face and he didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. His mouth was hanging open.
Calvin turned away from them and started walking toward the barn. Emily followed after, carrying baby Jason, and Rickie followed them.
“Calvin,” she said. “Calvin, what are we going to do? We don’t have any money.”
He didn’t answer, just kept walking.
“We don’t even have enough gas to get home tonight, and he gets nothing for sixth place. Calvin, what are we going to do?”
Calvin sat down on the tack trunk in front of Mountaineer’s stall, looked up at Emily, and said: “I don’t know.”
And then he started crying.
Rickie stared in shock. He’d never seen his father cry. Ever. More than that, he didn’t think his father was capable of crying. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Rickie’s stomach grumbled. It was painful, and he groaned. “I’m hungry, mom,” he said.
Emily ignored him. “Calvin, maybe that job is still available. You could call Dan.”
“There was no job,” he said, still crying.
Emily’s mouth fell open. “What do you mean, no job?”
“I mean that there was no job. There was never a job. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. I’ve been to six different places, and no one is hiring. Dan said he would hire me in a heartbeat, if he could. But there’s nothing open. There is nothing.”
“Cal,” she said, he voice sad and angry at the same time. “You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry, I thought that if he won we could pay off our bills and move. And then start over. Somewhere new. We needed this. I needed this.”
“Mom, I’m hungry,” Rickie said.
“Not now, Rickie,” she said. “Calvin, we have to do something. We need money. I don’t care what you thought you could do or what you planned. We need to do something right now, or—”
“But you promised—” Rickie started to say, tugging on his mom’s shirt.
“I said not now Rickie!” she yelled.
And suddenly she turned, shifting Jason to her left arm, and slapped Rickie across the face with her right hand.
Hard.
Time stopped. Everyone in the vicinity froze in place, afraid to move.
Rickie almost fell over she hit him so hard and his cheek started throbbing immediately. The look of utter shock on his face was exceeded only by the look of horror on Emily’s.
She raised the hand to her face, mouth hanging open.
“Oh my God, Rickie I’m so sorry.”
He turned and ran.
“Rickie!” she screamed after him as he dodged through the crowd and disappeared out of the barn. “Rickie! Come back!”
He didn’t stop.
***
Calvin found him about an hour later, hiding in the overhang of their trailer. It was a small space enclosed above the hitch where they stored all of Mountaineer’s racing gear. Rickie had gone there to hide because he wanted to get away from everyone.
His eyes were still puffy and his face still hurt, but he’d stopped crying by the time Calvin came in. Calvin climbed up to the overhang and leaned against the wall beside Rickie, staring up at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything, just sat silently.
A minute passed.
“How did you find me?” Rickie asked
“I followed you here,” Calvin said. “But wanted to give you some time. Your
mom’s outside crying.”
“I’m sorry I ran,” Rickie said, rubbing his eyes.
Calvin sat up. “No,” he said, “it’s alright. But your mom is sad. She feels terrible, Rickie.”
Part of him didn’t care. She should feel terrible. She had hit him. And not just hit him, but hit him hard.
“But it wasn’t her fault,” Calvin said.
“It wasn’t?”
“No,” he said. “It’s my fault.”
“You didn’t hit me.”
“I didn’t do my job,” he said. “I’m supposed to take care of you and your mom. And your brother. I’m your father. But I haven’t been doing a good job of it.”
Rickie didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.
“But that’s over with,” Calvin continued. “I’m going to do a better job from now on.”
“Okay,” Rickie said. “Dad, why did Mountaineer lose?”
Calvin hesitated. “He just got tired,” he said. “You know how sometimes it just isn’t your day? Horses have that too. He just had a bad day.”
“But he’ll do better next time?”
“Maybe,” said Calvin. “But he doesn’t belong to me anymore. Next time we can just cheer for him from the grandstand.”
“What do you mean?”
“I sold him,” Calvin said. “And the trailer actually, so we’ll have to leave pretty soon.”
Rickie leaned back and sighed. “So you’ll get a different horse?”
His dad shook his head. “No. No more horses. I thought…I thought I could do the horses and the family. But I can’t. It has to be one or the other. Do you understand?”
“I guess so,” Rickie said.
“Can you do me a favor?” his dad asked. “Forgive your mom. She feels terrible for what she did, and it wasn’t her fault.”
“Okay,” Rickie said. “Okay, dad.”
Calvin leaned in and gave him a hug.
They started climbing down from the overhang. Calvin helped Rickie down and then Rickie opened the door. Night had fallen outside and it was quiet. The clouds held dominion in the sky, blocking out the moon and stars. He paused in the doorway.
“Hey dad,” he said, “If you aren’t racing horses now, what are you going to do?”
Calvin was silent for a few seconds and then he shook his head. He looked really sad, and it made Rickie feel bad for him.
“I don’t know, Rickie,” Calvin said. “I don’t know.”
1966 - Rickie Greenwood
We can’t always get what we want
“And I wish I could say it ended there,” Calvin says.
I never knew this about Rickie, but I guess it does explain a lot. I think about my own children, and how they would turn out if something like that happened to them. It terrifies me, to be honest. The thought of hurting them at all, even accidentally, makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“Kids can overcome a lot,” I say, but even I don’t sound convinced.
“They can,” Calvin says. “But, I was a lot to overcome, and Rickie got the worst of it. I got a job at the factory. Tried to do better. But then Beth was born and I started feeling trapped. Like, is this my life? Is this it?”
I’m not quite sure what to say. “Is that when…?”
“Yeah,” Calvin says. “That’s when I started drinking. Like really drinking, like it was my job…”
***
Little Bethany wouldn’t stop crying.
It was Rickie’s birthday, not hers, yet she wouldn’t stop crying. She was ruining it. Ruining everything. Rickie had been looking forward to this day—his day—for weeks now, and now that it was finally here his stupid little sister wouldn’t stop crying. Didn’t she understand that not everything was about her?
His mom had even cancelled his birthday party because Beth and Jason were sick. Rickie wasn’t sick, but that didn’t matter. So now, instead of a party with all of his friends, he was in the backseat of a car with his crying sister going to…
Rickie frowned. Where were they going?
“Where are we going?” he asked his mom, kicking her seat to get her attention. They were on the road somewhere in town, but it was too dark outside to spot any landmarks. And any landmarks he could see from his lower perspective would have to be pretty tall anyway.
Mom had gotten a phone call, and now they were on the road.
She was slow in responding. “Into town,” she said finally.
“Why?”
She sighed the way only a mother can. “We just are, Rickie. Can you check on your sister?”
“She’s crying,” Rickie said. He used his best ‘duh’ tone, glancing over at the annoying creature on the seat next to him. Rickie had just turned seven today, and the squalling monster beside him would be one in only a few weeks.
She had even tried to steal his birthday.
“I know she’s crying,” Emily said. “But why is she crying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try to get her to stop. Sing her a song or something.”
“Make Jason do it,” he said, crossing his arms and scowling. Jason got the front seat, which should have been Rickie’s. He was oldest.
“He’s sleeping.”
Rickie shrugged. “Want me to wake him up?”
“No,” his mom said, exasperated. “Just…I don’t know, play with her. Get her to think about something else.”
“Like that we should be at home?”
“Rickie…”
“Okay, okay,” he said. He idly put his hand out, tapping Bethany on the nose. She stopped crying, her little hands grabbing his fingers. She tried to put one in her mouth and he jerked back.
“Ew, gross,” he said. “I don’t want baby germs.”
Bethany started crying again. He heard Emily sigh from the front seat.
“Why are we going into town?” he asked.
“Rickie…” she said in her ‘I’m not mad but I will be’ voice.
“Its dad, isn’t it?”
No response.
The car turned, entering a parking lot, but from Rickie’s vantage point he could just barely see the sign above the door. The words were clipped in their lighted glow, but he knew what they said anyway. ‘The Rusty Nail.’
It was the bar his dad liked. The one Mikey worked at.
“Wait here,” Emily said, stopping the car and glancing in the mirror. “I’ll only be a minute.”
“Okay,” Rickie said. Emily disappeared out of the car, closing the door behind her.
Rickie tapped the window with the nail of his left hand and let out a sigh. He was bored, so bored, and more than a little bit angry.
And hungry, he realized. They’d been planning on having dinner at home, but his mom had gotten the phone call before cooking anything. He hadn’t eaten since late that morning. It felt like his stomach was eating itself.
Maybe Mikey would cook him something…?
Bethany was still crying. Jason, Rickie checked, was still sleeping.
He counted to thirty, then opened the door and headed for the bar entrance.
***
The lights were dim inside and it wasn’t very crowded. Soft music played, too faint to make out clearly, and it smelled of stale smoke and ash. It wasn’t busy. It never was, at least not on the few times Rickie had been here. He still liked it though. It was big and had a lot of tables, and other than the smell it was a pleasant enough place.
He also liked his uncle, Mike. Calvin called him Mikey, and whenever he brought Rickie here Mikey would make him a sandwich and give him something to drink. That’s why Rickie wanted to be inside now. Calvin had made him promise to never tell his mother that he brought Rickie here.
But Rickie’s stomach was eating itself, and right now he couldn’t think of anything better than one of Mikey’s sandwiches. He could just pretend like he didn’t know what the place was and ask for food. Surely on his birthday Mikey would make him something?
He scanned the bar and
spotted his mom and Mikey standing near the counter. Mikey was leaning over the bar and talking quietly, and neither of them noticed as Rickie walked up.
“…since six,” Mikey said. He was tall with blonde hair and a smooth face, several years younger than his mother. He had on his dark brown jacket—leather—and Rickie had never seen him without it. He’d let Rickie wear it a couple times, but it was too big for him. But he liked the way it felt.
“Then why did you wait so long to call?” his mom asked. She was speaking in a hushed whisper, which of course made it easy for Rickie to hear too.
Mikey shook his head. “You know how he is.”
“Yeah, I do,” Emily said. She sounded sad.
“He had a rough day at the factory and he wanted a chance to relax,” Mikey offered.
“Every day must be rough,” Emily said bitterly. “And getting rougher.”
“I’m sorry Em.”
“For what, helping my husband drink himself to death?”
Mikey didn’t respond, but instead stared at the counter in front of him.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair,” Emily said.
“It’s true enough.”
“He’s your friend.”
“You’re my friend too. And you’re right. About his drinking. Maybe we should tell him that.”
She hesitated. “I did.”
“Is that where you got that shiner?”
Emily didn’t respond. Rickie didn’t know what a ‘shiner’ was, but he was kind of hoping it was food. He didn’t really know what they were talking about, but he decided it had been long enough. He climbed up on the stool a few down from his mom and smiled at Uncle Mikey.
Both of them were shocked, but he could tell his mom was also angry.
“I told you to wait in the car,” she said, narrowing her eyes
“But I’m hungry,” Rickie said. “And the baby won’t stop crying.”
“You mean Bethany,” Emily said. Rickie shrugged. “I told you we would get food after.”
“Why can’t we eat here?” Rickie asked. “I love Mikey’s hamburgers.”
Oops.
Her eyes narrowed and nostrils flared. Luckily, her anger was directed at Mikey, not him.
“When?”
“When what?” Mikey asked, playing dumb.
