by Nikki Tate
“Scampy left about ten minutes ago. He’s picking up that horse from Johnson’s farm. Check the board.”
The whiteboard in Scampy’s tack room is the master plan. All the horses he’s training are listed down the left. Beside each one he’s written instructions for the day. Walk only. Walk jog. Slow gallop. Turnout 60 mins. There’s a spot for feed, a place to write supplements, and notes about everything from bandaging to equipment changes to medication doses.
I don’t need to worry about anything except what’s in the exercise-ride column. He’s assigned numbers to the horses that need to be worked this morning, and I know he likes them to go in the right order.
Tony and Em get here even earlier than I do. They’ve been busy this morning. The fourteen horses Scampy trains have all been fed and watered.
Lordy is the first horse on the ride list. I wonder if it’s a test. Maybe Scampy has left instructions with Em to keep an eye on me. She’ll probably report everything I say.
Lord of the Fires has already been groomed. Tony comes out of a stall just as I come out of the tack room.
“Lordy looks good,” I say, careful to sound casual.
“He’s a good horse,” Tony says, giving Lordy a pat on the neck.
Em nods and checks the girth.
I fasten my helmet buckle with a snap.
“Take it easy,” Tony says to me. It’s an innocent enough thing to say, but something about the way Tony smirks makes me wonder what he means. Is everyone spying and ready to report back to Scampy?
Em laces her fingers together and I bend my left leg. She cups my knee in her hands and we count—one, two, three. Em might not be big, but she’s strong. With my jump and her push, I’m in the saddle as if I weighed nothing.
Lord of the Fires doesn’t wait. He’s an old pro and all business as he strides off. Horses pop their heads over their stall doors and watch us go by. At the end of our row I look left, wait for a gap in the horse traffic and call out, “Horse moving in!” We slip into the procession heading for the track.
Post time for the first race is 2:00 PM. The horses that aren’t racing still need their workouts. It’s like a carnival every morning, with horses coming and going. Golf carts and bicycles zip around the maze of barns. Grooms and stable hands scurry this way and that, pushing wheelbarrows piled high with manure or bales of hay. Trainers yell instructions and rude jokes in about equal doses. A few jockeys and their agents hang around, meeting with trainers and checking out horses the jockeys will ride later in the day.
“Hey, Spencer, you gonna stop growing any time soon?” Fletcher, an older guy who does more work these days as a gallop boy than he does as a jockey, is always giving me a hard time about my height. He’s riding one of Chester MacGuire’s horses, a big black colt with a brilliant white blaze and four evenly matched white socks. Fletcher pulls up beside me. He continues his ribbing as we make our way to the gate at the back of the track.
For a while last summer, I prayed that maybe I’d get lucky and never grow. Jockeys are about the only people who think that way. Right around Christmas, Grandma and I were horrified to discover all my jeans were too short.
I’m as skinny as ever, but already too tall to hope to be a jockey. But I can still work the horses, keeping them in shape and getting them ready to race. That’s almost as good.
Fletcher and I ride through the gate together, and then he takes off at a fast canter, his horse glossy and well-muscled. Lord of the Fires waits until I ask, and then lifts into a long, reaching trot. No sign of soreness. He’s moving easily and seems relaxed. We keep to the outside, giving up the inside to the horses having fast workouts. I cluck to Lordy and he picks up to a canter. We gather speed as we move around the track.
Every fiber of my body is tuned to the horse. Have I imagined he hasn’t been himself? I don’t want him to be lame, but I don’t want to be wrong either. I’ve felt him hesitate when I’ve pushed him hard and when we’ve worked fast through the turns. Right now, though, he feels okay.
I’m not even aware of when it happens, when I slip into my riding bubble and the rest of the world disappears. Today the bubble pops practically before it forms when the alarm buzzer sounds. A voice over the loudspeaker warns, “Loose horse! Heads up! Loose horse!”
chapter five
“Whoa...easy...”
I concentrate all my attention on Lord of the Fires. Stay calm. When the riderless gray horse tears past us, head up and eyes wild, a ripple of crazy energy radiates from Lordy. I grab hold of his mane. He gives a hearty buck and bolts off after the loose horse. Somehow, I manage to stay on.
I’m vaguely aware of riders trying to keep their horses under control and out of the way. Ahead, one of the track outriders heads off the gray. The horse wheels around and gallops straight toward us.
I haul on Lordy, trying to pull his head around. He clamps down on the bit and ignores me. The loose horse charges past us. Lordy hits the brakes, and I fly up onto his neck. It’s all I can do to hang on. Lordy spins so we are facing the other direction. I thunk back into the saddle. I’ve lost both my stirrups. Lordy races off after the gray. Someone shouts as we whip past.
Ahead, several people on foot have formed a line across the track. They wave their arms in the air. At first I think the gray is going to plow right into them. At the last second the horse turns back toward the outrider, who passes me, yelling, “Pull up! Pull up!”
I haul on Lordy’s left rein and drive my bootheel into his left side. My arm muscles feel like they’re going to rip. Finally I pull Lordy into a small circle. A man runs over and catches hold of Lordy’s bridle. The horse flings his head up, half rearing.
“You okay?” the guy who has hold of Lordy’s bridle asks.
Lordy snorts. He skitters sideways as we try to get him under control. He isn’t paying much attention to either of us. Lordy’s head jerks up and his ears prick forward, intent on the gray, who has been caught by the outrider. The outrider’s dun-colored Quarter Horse is completely calm despite the stupid behavior of the young Thoroughbred.
“Easy, nutbar,” the guy on the ground says to Lordy.
I nudge my toes back into the stirrups and get a better grip on the reins with my left hand. The fingers of my right hand are still twisted through Lordy’s wild mane. Lord of the Fires feels like he could explode at any moment. Stripes of white lather mark sweaty lines where the reins run alongside his neck.
“Settle down, settle down,” the guy on the ground murmurs through clenched teeth.
“Let him go,” I say. The gray has been led away. I’m pretty sure that if I can let Lordy move again, he’ll feel happier. For all Lordy knows, the gray was escaping from a saber-toothed tiger, and the only sensible thing to do was run away. We humans like to think we are in charge, but horses are big strong prey animals. Their best defense is to run faster than whatever is chasing them. God help the rider who thinks it’s actually possible to reason with a horse in flight mode.
“Let go!” I say again.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine.” My heart hammers in my chest. “I’m fine,” I repeat a little louder. Some of the other riders have started moving again, even though the all-clear buzzer hasn’t sounded. I’m not the only one having trouble controlling my horse.
Over on the outside rail, Angie and Taylor, two riders from Doc Masters’ barn, are walking their mounts in small circles. Just being close to the other horses seems to calm Lord of the Fires. He lets out a loud whinny that nearly shakes me out of the saddle. Angie and Taylor see my death grip on the mane and laugh. It’s not a mean laugh, more like the kind of laugh that happens after you nearly die, but don’t.
“Crazy mare, that gray,” Angie says.
“Don’t know why Geoff bothers to keep her in training,” Taylor adds. “She’s got a brain the size of a pea.”
The all clear sounds, and the three of us turn our horses and pick up an easy canter on the outside rail. Inside, the faster horses
are soon back in gear, manes and tails streaming behind them. We take it easy, Angie and Taylor chatting all the way around the track.
Lord of the Fires is eager enough to keep up, but the unevenness is back. I ask for a lead change so he’s leading with his right leg instead of his left when he reaches forward in each stride. He gives me the change, but switches back on his own after just a few steps. After two laps, we pull up and I turn Lordy for the out gate. Now that we’ve slowed down, he feels okay again. What I know for certain is that I have not been imagining he’s bordering on lame.
chapter six
There’s quite a crowd at the gate. Trainers wait, asking if horse, then rider, is okay. Hands reach out to touch horses’ sweaty necks and offer reassurance. Grooms stand ready to help take horses back to the barn. When the loose-horse alarm sounds, it’s amazing how many people emerge from the barns—to see the damage, to pick up the pieces.
“You okay?”
Em is at Lordy’s shoulder, her hand reaching up toward my knee.
My heart flutter kicks. Em looks genuinely worried. “How’s Lordy? Did you see what happened?”
Maybe Em’s just worried about the horse. “Don’t know. It was that gray mare of Geoff O’Reilly’s. Flipped out.”
“Ryan Murray got carried off on a stretcher. He did something to his leg, I think. He couldn’t stand on his own.”
Legs heal, I think. It would have been worse if the rider had been unconscious. My stomach squeezes. White sheets. Bandages. The hiss of a machine squeezing air into someone’s lungs.
“He’ll be fine,” I say quickly, pushing away the memories.
Lordy has decided it’s time to head back to the barn. Em is keeping up beside us, half walking and half jogging.
“He might be a little off,” I say. “After the gray bolted past us, we had some trouble. When we cantered, he seemed stiff or something.”
Em scoots back a few steps and watches us. “Looks fine now. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I know what I felt.”
“Because I can’t save your sorry ass every time you have a bumpy ride.”
Em hasn’t missed too many chances to remind me that she’s the one who convinced Scampy to hire me back. I don’t push it. Em will do the right thing.
“I’ll wrap Lordy after I cool him out,” she says. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah. Nothing like a jolt of adrenaline to wake a guy up.”
Em laughs. “Coffee would work too. You want a cup? I don’t want to put on another pot just for me.”
“Sure. I’ll grab a cup after I ride Chiquita.”
It’s a good thing Em sprints off between the barns. The minute the words are out of my mouth, heat rises in my cheeks. She doesn’t need to know my thermos is still half-full. She certainly doesn’t need to know that her offer of coffee makes me want to grin. I shut down the smile and turn my attention to getting Lordy back to the barn.
Whatever thought I might have had of a cozy cup of coffee in the tack room with Em quickly evaporates. Tony has his feet up on the truck bench in the tack room. The truck bench is one of several pieces of furniture that once had some other purpose. It’s bolted to the floor beside a stack of milk crates. The top crate serves as an end table. The others are packed full of neatly rolled leg wraps, bottles of liniment and copies of Thoroughbred Times and Blood Horse.
Tony’s eyes are closed, and he sounds like a sick diesel engine on a cold morning. The last thing I need to do is disturb his beauty rest.
The barns hum with activity. I rush to keep up with the horses that Em gets ready for me to ride. Scampy has also asked another exercise rider, Wee Jimmy Jump-up, to help. The spring meet is rolling along, and Scampy has increased the number of horses he wants worked each day. Tony reappears at some point, but he’s in a sour mood. We all keep out of his way.
After I’ve ridden six horses, I’m ready for my lunch even though it isn’t even nine. I’m munching my way through my sticky sandwich when I hear several loud bangs out in the aisle. Scampy yells, “Settle down in there!”
“Who’s that?” I ask when a new dark bay horse with a narrow blaze sticks its head over the top of the stall door.
“Devil May Care. A Stunning Mate stud colt out of Pussy Winnow, a Black Kat mare from Johnson’s farm.”
Scampy speaks the language of blood-lines as easily as he breathes and chews gum. Stunning Mate is the name of a stallion in Ontario who sired a few decent horses before he had to be put down. He broke a back leg in a freak accident out in his paddock. I’ve never heard of the new horse’s dam, Pussy Winnow. But I’ve certainly heard of Black Kat. He’s one of a whole bunch of top-notch Thoroughbreds that can be traced back to a couple of Kentucky horses. Both of those superstars have “Kat” in their names.
“Three-year-old,” Scampy says before I have a chance to ask. “No experience. He had some damned infection last year, so he never raced. We’ll get him going tomorrow.”
Another boom sounds from the colt’s stall as Devil May Care pounds the wall with a back hoof.
“Stop that!” Scampy scowls at the horse and picks up a broom. “I’ll smack you a good one if you keep that up!”
The horse lets fly with another kick. Scampy whacks the outside of the stall door with the broom. The broom makes a loud noise, but doesn’t hit the horse. Devil May Care pokes his head back over the half door and snorts.
“Don’t think I like this horse,” Scampy says as he puts the broom down. When he reaches over to touch Devil May Care’s neck, the horse pulls his head back and retreats into his stall. “How were the rides today?”
I follow Scampy into the tack room and we go through the list, starting with Lord of the Fires. I hesitate and then say, “We had a little trouble. That gray mare of Geoff’s bolted. Lordy sort of took off.” I know there’s no point in hiding what happened. Scampy’s probably heard all the gory details seventeen times already.
“You shouldn’t have let him get away from you like that,” Scampy says.
“I know. But he—”
“Be ready next time. Em’s got him wrapped?”
I nod.
“Anything else?”
For the first time, I don’t tell Scampy everything. I don’t mention Lordy was uneven. I want to keep my job.
“No—that’s it.”
Scampy narrows his eyes like he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t push, though. “What about Chiquita?”
One by one I bring Scampy up to speed on what the rides were like. Chiquita was strong and relaxed. Twitter wanted to race the big red four-year-old out of Doc Masters’ barn. Bing Bang Bong just wanted to nap. “He’s really lazy,” I say. “It’s like he has no interest in what’s going on.”
“Dumb as a bag of hammers,” Scampy says. “I’ll call Dr. Conrad and we’ll see how much longer she wants to keep him here.”
Bing definitely lacks enthusiasm, but I don’t think the horse is dumb. He just needs another job. I don’t mind giving him a bad report card, though. For one thing, he hasn’t placed in a race yet, so it’s no big secret he’s a little short on talent. But I also know that the owner, a lady vet from Vernon, always takes her retired racehorses to another trainer. The horses learn other jobs that don’t involve racing. I’ve heard they usually wind up with pretty good homes as show jumpers or eventers or pleasure horses. That’s more than I can say for some of the horses after their track careers are done.
“Need a hand?” I ask Em, who is pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with sacks of feed.
“I’d never say no to an offer like that,” she says.
We unload and stack the feed. We fetch three more barrows loaded with heavy feed sacks from Scampy’s truck before we take a break.
After that, I help Em fill the hay nets and top up the water buckets. Then I join Grandma in the stands to watch the races.
It’s a fluky Saturday. Scampy doesn’t have a horse running. It’s great to be a spectator. Next weekend it will be all hands on deck.
I won’t have the luxury of sitting down for a whole afternoon.
chapter seven
A couple of weeks later, Grandma and I are at the kitchen table.
“Spencer—where’s your head?” Grandma glares at me. “I asked if you wanted another spud.”
“Sorry. Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, please.”
Grandma drops the baked potato onto my plate. “What’s on your mind?”
Em. Em. Em. I’m not about to tell my grandmother that I can’t get a girl out of my mind. Ever since the day when Geoff O’Reilly’s gray mare messed up my morning, I’ve looked at Em differently. Which is dumb, because she’s still her old, slightly snotty self. But she had reached up to touch my knee. That moment was the highlight of my month.
“Girl trouble?” Grandma winks and pushes the gravy jug across the table.
“No.” Fortunately, the Lordy problem is getting more complicated so my quick response isn’t exactly a lie. “Are you ready for tomorrow?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Working on it as we speak.” Grandma fishes several sheets of paper out of a stack she’s pushed aside to make room for the dinner dishes. She slides the list of tomorrow’s race entries across the table toward me. She has also printed out Billy Bob’s Picks. Billy Bob is one of several race handicappers who offer advice to people like Grandma. Grandma figures he’s the best in the business.
I point at the fifth race. “Lordy’s running.”
“Lord of the Fires?” She puts on her reading glasses and studies the race information. “Six furlongs. Nick Espinoza is riding. He’s been doing okay recently. Claiming race: $25,000. What do you think?”
“He shouldn’t be racing.”
Grandma peers over her reading glasses and raises her eyebrows. “Espinoza or the horse?”
“The horse. He’s still not right. He was the one I was riding the day that gray mare got loose. He felt awful.” Awful is a bit strong, but I don’t want Grandma to lose her money betting on a horse I know won’t be near the winners.
