Homestretch

by Paul Volponi

  Only, I wouldn’t budge.

  Then one day Dad sneaked up from behind, without Mom seeing, and whispered to me, “Hold on tight.”

  He slapped my horse hard on the backside.

  That horse took off running and I lost my balance.

  I had both arms locked tight around its long neck, fighting to hang on. I could hear Mom’s horse chasing after me, and her yelling, “Pull on the reins!”

  But I couldn’t. And after fifty or sixty yards I lost my grip, tumbling to the gravel-covered ground.

  Once Mom saw I was all right, she rode past me, running down the loose horse. Dad walked over to where I was, and his boss came charging out of the office.

  “This isn’t some damn rodeo! What’s goin’ on here?” he hollered, staring Dad down.

  Dad cleared his throat, kicking away the rocks at his feet.

  Before he said a word, I answered, “It’s my fault, sir. I got a big head, thinking I could really ride. That’s all.”

  I took the blame because I didn’t want Dad to get into any kind of argument and maybe get fired again. Mom was so happy with him working there, and I figured he was better off around those horses than spreading hot tar across somebody’s roof.

  Mom brought the horse back by the bridle, and Dad checked him over.

  “No worse for the wear,” he told his boss.

  “Gas, I fell plenty of times. You just gotta climb right back on,” Mom said. “It’s the only way.”

  “She’s right,” echoed Dad. “Let’s go.”

  Then he cupped his hand and gave me a boost into the saddle.

  “More important, you gotta learn to listen, son,” Dad said harsh, before he apologized to his boss for what I’d done.

  That really got me pissed. Dad made it sound like he’d warned me a hundred times. And maybe even he believed it was my fault now.

  Dad never thanked me for taking the heat. He never even mentioned it, and Mom never found out what really happened.

  By the next week I was hell-bent on galloping that same horse, just to show up Dad. And I did.

  It was like flying on the wind, and it made me forget for a while about how being so small had me weighed down.

  I hadn’t been on a horse in five months now.

  Not since Mom was killed.

  I got woken up that next morning just after five o’clock, when the beaners who worked at Dag’s barn came into the equipment room and saw Nacho and his brothers. They all began hugging one another and “mi familia” was on nearly everyone’s lips as they moved around me like I was invisible.

  That’s when I realized all of Dag’s workers, except for me, were Mexican.

  They all started pulling out the horses’ feed tubs and hayracks. I stumbled around lost in that mix for more than a half hour. Then I spotted a big copper pot by Dag’s office and spooned myself some oatmeal.

  Dag was busy inside on the phone. But some heavyweight beaner was barking out orders at everyone in Spanish.

  “Breakfast finished,” he snapped through a thick accent, pushing a rake into my hands. “You clean up outside. Horses ready to walk later.”

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was Dag’s assistant, and what Dad always called the HMIC—Head Mexican in Charge.

  Then I heard somebody call him Paolo, before he snapped at me a second time, “Go work, gringo!”

  I squeezed the rake tight, and in my bones I knew that except for Nacho, Rafael, and Anibal—who’d just got to this country—any of those beaners could have been the one who got Mom killed.

  That burned inside of me, and I wondered how much you could hate somebody you’d never seen, just hating the idea of him. Hating that he was still alive, and breathing the air in this country he didn’t deserve.

  The sky was still dark and I could barely see the ground outside. But I kept scratching at it with that rake, harder and harder, wanting to dig my way to China, or Spain, where Mom’s familia was from.

  A beaner came flying up to the barn on a bike, pedaling his ass off. He must have been really late, because he ditched the bike in the grass with the front wheel still spinning.

  I was probably just a shadow to him as he bolted past, touching me on the shoulder.

  “Buenos días,” he said, disappearing into Dag’s barn.

  I hadn’t washed in two days, so I didn’t know who or what I smelled like anymore. The salt from my sweat was stinging my eyes, and I felt like I’d just crawled out of some hole.

  A beaner had just mistaken me for one of his own.

  That’s when I knew I couldn’t sink any lower.

  I stood there like a statue, leaning on that rake with my emotions frozen solid.

  Then slowly the darkness started to fade.

  I heard a cock crow—ererEREEEERRrrrr.

  A warm glow found the back of my neck, and I turned around.

  The sun was coming up over the huge, empty grandstand, and the rays of light were reflecting off the small lake in the middle of the racetrack’s infield.

  The growl of engines was growing louder, heading in my direction.

  So I walked down a grassy hill, maybe twenty yards.

  I put both hands on the white rail and stared down the straightaway of racetrack.

  A tractor came rolling past, dragging a heavy metal claw with long iron fingers that turned over the dirt, making it an even darker brown.

  Then a truck came behind that, spraying a mist of water.

  My lungs were breathing it all in deep, like I’d been suffocating for a long time without knowing.

  Suddenly, the rhythm of hoofbeats drummed along the racetrack.

  Through the sun’s glare I could see the silhouette of a woman galloping a horse. I closed my eyes and listened—brrmp-brrmp-brrmp-brrmp—as she rode past.

  For a few seconds everything I’d been holding back inside of me melted down. I wish I could have stopped time right there, in that paradise. I wanted to plant my feet into the ground and never move again, like a tree with roots.

  Chapter Four

  THE FIRST OF DAG’s horses to come back from training at the racetrack that morning was Bad Boy Rising. Nacho stood him outside in the sun on a pair of black rubber mats laid side by side. Then he handed me the leather lead shank. It was like holding a huge dog on a leash—one that was a foot and a half taller than me and outweighed me by more than a thousand pounds.

  Bad Boy shook his head from side to side, eyeing me like he could take off anytime he wanted, and my whole body began to quiver.

  But Nacho chirped to him and turned the hose on a soapy sponge inside of a silver bucket. Then he started to scrub away at Bad Boy Rising’s neck, and I could feel that horse begin to relax.

  When the bath was over, I started walking Bad Boy Rising in circles around the barn to dry off and cool down his muscles.

  He was tugging hard the whole way, testing me. And I had to use all my strength to keep him going in a straight line.

  “Bad Boy say he’s the boss of you, too!” boomed Paolo for half the barn to hear. “He show everybody how far down you are!”

  Hardly any of those beaners needed that translated, because most of them were laughing along with Paolo.

  On my last lap around the barn with Bad Boy Rising, I saw a saddle sitting on the stall door of one of Rafael’s horses. It was black with a picture of a red, pointy-tailed devil holding a fiery pitchfork stitched into the side. A dark-skinned exercise rider who was talking to Dag saw me looking at it. He stopped in midsentence and stared laser beams through me, like he’d whip my ass from here to tomorrow for having my eyes on his saddle.

  He was no bigger than I was and probably as old as my dad.

  But his hot glare nearly turned my legs to butter. So I dropped my eyes to the floor fast and kept walking while I still could.

  When I circled back around, Rafael had just finished tightening the black saddle on his horse. Dag gave a leg up to that devil rider, who clenched the whip between his te
eth as he tightened the reins with both hands. Then he took the horse down to the track, with Dag slithering alongside. And I started to breathe a lot easier with him gone.

  I’d walked three more horses around the barn that morning before I noticed another hot walker taking one into an open courtyard between a half dozen different stables. That courtyard had a narrow dirt path circling a huge shade tree, where horses were walking single file.

  When Nacho finished giving his other horse a bath, I took the bucket of soapy water and poured it over my head.

  Nacho smiled, sniffing at his sweat-stained armpits, and said, “May-be I need.”

  “Sí. Every day from now on,” I sniped, squeezing my nostrils shut between two fingers and wondering if beaners even had soap in their stinking country.

  I took Nacho’s horse, an easygoing filly named Rose of Sharon, out to that courtyard, looking for a change of scenery. I’d been walking her for maybe five minutes when that devil rider brought another runner of Dag’s back to the barn. I tried to ignore him, but my eyes met his anyway, like some kind of magnetic force was pulling them into line.

  Then he stood in the saddle, hocking up a wad of phlegm from his throat and spitting into the grass as he rode past.

  “So you just got here, and El Diablo thinks you’re clam juice,” said a soft voice from behind me. “Well, all right for you.”

  I turned to see who it was, and it was like getting hit by a lightning bolt—she was that beautiful.

  Her silky blond hair was bouncing off to the side in a ponytail. There was a silver cross on a chain lying flat against her chest, and the loose white blouse she had on reminded me of an angel’s robes. She was an eyelash taller than me—not too short for a girl—and probably a year or two older than I was pretending to be.

  I stopped in my tracks and struggled hard to find my tongue as she kept her horse a good ten feet in back of mine.

  “All I did was look at him,” I finally said.

  “That’ll do it,” she said, jutting out her chin as a signal for me to keep walking my filly.

  “Why do they call him that?” I asked, moving forward, even though every thought in my mind was on her.

  “Comes from his days riding in Peru, when his horse trampled another jockey during a race and killed him, his own brother,” she said. “Then he came to the States. Trainers say he’s so strong that when he whips horses, they run like the devil was chasing them. But two years ago he got caught fixing a race—holding his horse back so a long shot could win and he could cash a bet.”

  That’s when I noticed an old man with his feet planted at the far edge of that circular path.

  “At least it’s better than doping a horse to run faster than it really can,” the old man said to me. “That’s what your new boss, Dag, does. Did you know that? One day they’ll start testing at Pennington for those magic milk shakes he feeds some of them, and he’ll be gone.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say back to him, or what a “magic milk shake” was. But I didn’t want to make any more enemies, so I answered, “I guess,” and followed the circle.

  “That’s my grandpa, Cap Daly. I work for him,” she said as we started back around. “He’s been training racehorses here for more than forty years. And in case you haven’t figured it out, he hates Dag.”

  “You think Dag’s a crook?”

  “Think? I know it,” she answered.

  “And El Diablo, he did time in prison for fixing races?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder to steal another peek at her.

  “Nah. He got probation. Racing commission took his jockey’s license and gave him a big fine. All he’s allowed to do now is exercise horses. I hear he puts in the paperwork every year, praying to get reinstated. They took away what he loves most—race riding. That’s why he’s such hell to be around. And in the mornings, out on the racetrack, he’s even worse. I won’t get anywhere near him when I’m on a horse.”

  “You’re an exercise rider too?”

  “I got lots of jobs at the barn. My grandpa can’t afford to hire much help these days. He runs a small stable now. Down to just four horses.”

  “Because of his age?”

  “No,” she answered short as we made the curve and approached the old man again.

  “This one’s walked enough, Tammie,” said Cap, tipping back his Kangol hat and wiping his forehead dry.

  Tammie swung her horse around mine, and I stopped.

  “So, Rose of Sharon, who’s your friend?” Tammie asked my filly, before she turned her eyes back to me. “She used to be in my grandpa’s barn before her owner moved her to Dag’s.”

  “Oh. My name’s Gas,” I said.

  “Really?” she asked. “Because you ride a racehorse so fast?”

  I just nodded my head, staring into her honey brown eyes.

  Then Cap said, “Gas, I’ll give you some good advice. It’s for the benefit of you and this filly, not your boss. You can’t turn a horse on tight angles like you been doing. It puts too much pressure on their ankles.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Forty years, huh? I guess you know everything about training horses.”

  “I’ll know more when they learn to talk,” he said, half serious.

  “Maybe I’ll see you on the racetrack or at the cantina,” Tammie called back to me as they walked off.

  I turned my head all the way around to keep watching Tammie from behind, as me and Rose of Sharon made the curve for another lap.

  By eleven thirty all the horses were back in their stalls eating up, and there wasn’t a pile of shit you could see left anywhere in Dag’s barn. Just before we quit for the day, Dag called Nacho, Rafael, Anibal, and me into his office.

  He was coiled in a leather chair, with Paolo standing next to him.

  “Muchachos,” Dag said, waving us inside. “Good day’s work. Bueno. Bueno.”

  There was a brown and white chicken on the floor, and Dag had some corn feed in his hand.

  “Watch,” Paolo told us, pointing to the chicken at Dag’s feet.

  Dag took off his mirrored glasses, looking that chicken in the eye. He held his hand over its head, and Paolo put his fingers in front of his mouth, playing an imaginary flute.

  “Dee-de-dee-de-de. Dee-de-dee-de-dee-de-de,” sang Paolo, like Dag was one of those Arabian snake charmers.

  The chicken started walking backward in circles, following Dag’s hand like it was hypnotized.

  Those beaners were laughing hysterical over that show, and even Paolo, who’d probably seen it lots of times before, stopped singing to slap his sides. But it was all I could do to fake a smile, thinking how I never wanted to become like that chicken, and about what Tammie and her grandpa had said about Dag.

  Dag looked at me hard with his dark green eyes.

  “I thought you just trained horses,” I said, almost in self-defense.

  “Plenty of animals in these stables,” he answered, putting his glasses back on. “Chickens, dogs, a goat or two. They all help keep the horses calm.”

  Then Dag stood up and pulled out a roll of bills from the front pocket of his denims. He gave us each forty bucks and said, “Here’s an advance on your first week’s pay, so you can eat and stuff.”

  Paolo was translating that into Spanish before the words were out of Dag’s mouth.

  Nacho and his brothers shook Dag’s hand, saying, “Gracias, Señor Dag. Muchas gracias.”

  I was pretty thankful too as his hand clamped around mine.

  Then Dag took a fresh toothpick from a little glass cup on his desk. As he started to pick at his teeth, he told Paolo, “Go get these boys settled in right.”

  Paolo walked us over to the men’s dorms, where lots of the workers from the different stables lived.

  It wasn’t just the workers at Dag’s barn who were beaners. Nearly every groom and hot walker I’d seen on the backstretch was Mexican. And it was the same with everybody I saw going in and out of that dorm’s lobby.

  A list of rules wa
s printed on the lobby wall in Spanish and English.

  NO MUJERES. NO NIÑOS.

  NO VIOLENCIA.

  NO ALCOHOL. NO NARCÓTICOS.

  NO WOMEN. NO CHILDREN.

  NO VIOLENCE.

  NO ALCOHOL. NO DRUGS.

  The backstretch dorms were rent-free and built right next to the barns so the workers could be close to the horses in case there was ever an emergency.

  The man in charge of the dorms said that only two people were allowed to a room.

  “No exceptions. No how. No way,” the man went on, with a Southern twang. “I’ve split up more Mexican families than the U.S. Border Patrol.”

  That’s when Paolo grinned at me, snorting, “Now, who’s gonna want to be roommate with you?”

  I wished I could tell him exactly how I felt. How I’d rather sleep in the monkey house at the zoo, or underneath a pile of garbage at the city dump, than room with a beaner. But I couldn’t. I was stuck.

  The three brothers looked at one another for a few seconds.

  Then Nacho said, “Me. I—go with Gas.”

  “Con el gringo,” howled Paolo.

  “Es un hijo de María,” Nacho said, pointing to the bottom half of the tattoo beneath my short sleeve. “Nuestros madre se llama María también.”

  “Sí. Sí,” said Rafael and Anibal.

  I wanted to punch Paolo in his fat face, but I couldn’t afford to get fired. And right then I began to understand how Dad must have felt at some of those jobs he’d had.

  Through that whole scene I had one eye glued to the pay phone hanging on the wall. I was thinking about Dad, wondering if he was sober.

  I’d been gone nearly two days. I thought about calling. But I was scared to hear his voice. To hear what it would sound like with him knowing I’d ditched him, my own flesh and blood—even though he deserved it.

  But I’d have been even more scared to hear that phone keep on ringing, with no one picking up. No answering machine. Nothing.

  And I was convinced that if there was no answer, it wouldn’t be because Dad was running all over town trying to find me.