Homestretch

by Paul Volponi

  “It’ll just turn out the same,” I said, wondering how long I could pretend I knew how to ride. “With me winning.”

  “You wish,” Tammie said.

  After that I headed back to Dag’s barn, thinking I could help bring Rose of Sharon over to the racetrack and see some more of Tammie when she got there with her grandpa’s filly.

  But when I came up on the barn, Paolo was in front of the only open door with both arms folded across his chest, like he was standing guard. And Nacho was sitting outside on top of a turned-over bucket, waiting with an empty lead shank in his hands.

  “Gringo,” said Paolo in a harsh voice. “Why you here? No work for you now.”

  I glanced over at Nacho, but he looked lost sitting there, like he didn’t know why he wasn’t inside the barn.

  “Just thought I could do something,” I said. “Help out.”

  “Oh, you a big help, little man,” Paolo snorted. “The boss very busy inside. Prerace inspection. No one allowed in.”

  A few minutes later Dag came into the doorway, giving Paolo a big thumbs-up.

  “Está preparada,” Paolo told Nacho, who went into Rose of Sharon’s stall and attached the lead shank to her bridle for the walk over to the front side.

  Only, Rose of Sharon wasn’t the same easygoing filly anymore. She was suddenly a bundle of energy, and Nacho had to wrestle with her every step of the way to the track. He kept trying to calm her down, stroking Rose of Sharon’s head and whispering to her in Spanish.

  I couldn’t tell if she was just pumped up because she knew she was going to race, or if something else was going on.

  There was a walking ring in the paddock, just off the grandstand, where the crowd gathered to see the horses get saddled. Tammie took one look at Rose of Sharon and shook her head.

  “See that odds board, Gas?” she said. “Rose of Sharon should be at least ten to one in this race. But she’s only three to one. Guess why? ‘Cause Dag’s probably got a bundle of money down on this one. Just look at her on the walking ring, ready to explode. She’s been milk-shaked for sure.”

  “What does that mean—’milk-shaked’?” I asked.

  “A milk shake’s a mix of baking soda and Gatorade. The sugar gives a horse a burst of energy, and the sodium fights off muscle fatigue so they keep running. A trainer or somebody sticks a long tube into a horse’s nose, right down into the stomach, and pumps it in. Only, nobody really knows how much to give a horse. How much will make it run faster, and how much will make it sick. Because that’s what horses do. They don’t puke things up like people. They just get sick.”

  “Then, how come the track doesn’t catch him at it, like they did El Diablo fixing races?” I asked.

  “Because by the time a horse gets to the test barn after the race, all that stuff’s been burned up out of its system. That’s why. There’s a special test for high levels of carbon dioxide left over from the baking soda. But they don’t give that one at Pennington. It costs too much,” she said, getting more aggravated with every word. “Honest trainers can’t compete with crooks like Dag. That’s what happened to most of my grandpa’s horses. Their owners moved them over to Dag’s barn so their horses could be with a winner.”

  I watched Tammie’s grandpa go over every inch of their filly, stretching out her front legs one at a time and making sure everything was right with her before he tacked on the saddle.

  Dag never even looked at Rose of Sharon. He spent the whole time in the paddock schmoozing with her owners and giving instructions to the jockey—a hawk-nosed guy named Gillette—while Paolo put the saddle on her.

  In the race Rose of Sharon shot right out of the starting gate for the lead. But she had company as another filly pressed her all the way, making her run hard.

  “The field moves for the far turn, and a speed duel starts to percolate on the front end,” called the track announcer.

  The crowd gasped when the time for the first quarter mile was posted.

  “Twenty-one and three-fifths seconds! That’s way too fast!” screamed some guy with a fistful of betting tickets. “She’s cooked!”

  But at the head of the homestretch Gillette shook the reins at Rose of Sharon, who spurted clear. Then I saw Cap’s filly, flying up fast on the outside.

  “There’s an eighth of a mile to go, and here comes My Heavenly Sign, a fresh challenger for Rose of Sharon, who’s had to run hard the whole way. Now it’s My Heavenly Sign right at the throatlatch of Rose of Sharon,” called the announcer.

  Tammie was jumping up and down, screaming, “Come on, baby! Come on!”

  I would have bet my life that Cap’s filly was going to run right on by, and probably everybody else in that grandstand would have too. Except maybe for Dag.

  “Seventy yards to go, and the resilient Rose of Sharon’s got another gear,” said the announcer. “She pulls away from My Heavenly Sign. They come under the wire, and it’s going to be Rose of Sharon, who would NOT BE DENIED!”

  “You can’t train a horse to do that!” shouted Tammie as she stormed past Dag.

  Then Paolo went over to Nacho, slipping an arm around his shoulder.

  “La chica es bonita, pero muy loca en la cabeza,” Paolo said, twirling a finger at his right temple.

  Chapter Seven

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Dag was standing out in front of his barn screaming for Nacho.

  “Today, kid! Let’s go! Where’s Bad Boy Rising?” boomed Dag, beside a pair of horses ready to head down to the racetrack.

  El Diablo was perched on one of them, smirking.

  “Ahora, estúpido!” Paolo barked toward the barn.

  That’s when Nacho brought out Bad Boy Rising, without a saddle or an exercise rider.

  “What the hell? Where’s that new rider I hired? I’ll fire his worthless ass,” Dag hissed.

  “Don’t know,” said Paolo. “Saw him in the cantina last night with a bottle of tequila and una blanca fea.”

  “We’ll have to work out Bad Boy with the next set of horses,” Dag said, shaking his head.

  “Not me,” warned El Diablo. “I don’t get on wack jobs. He’s got no talent and too many screws loose.”

  I knew this was my chance to jump over all those beaners at the barn, and impress Tammie, too. I was scared to death of Bad Boy Rising, but I couldn’t let it slip by.

  “I’ll ride,” I said, pulling up every ounce of courage I had.

  Paolo burst out laughing over that, but El Diablo grilled the shit out of me with a stare, like I’d just shown him up.

  Dag hesitated for a few seconds before he said, “Ya know what? You got two minutes to get a saddle, a protective vest, and a helmet from the equipment room. Then if you can get on that beast, you can ride him.”

  After I got ready, Nacho gave me a leg up onto Bad Boy’s back.

  “Vaya con Dios,” he whispered.

  I knew that meant “Go with God” from the times I’d heard Mom singing an old song with those same words:

  Vaya con Dios, my darling,

  Vaya con Dios, my love.

  I probably only got Bad Boy Rising to the racetrack because that’s where he wanted to go anyway.

  Then I guided him through the open gap in the rail, which was lined by an ambulance on each side—one with a trailer attached to the back for the horses, and a human one for jockeys.

  “The three of you, jog your horses over to the half-mile pole, and then let ’em break running to the wire together,” Dag called out to us.

  Just then Tammie came galloping past, her ponytail flying in the breeze and the whip sticking out of the back pocket of her blue jeans.

  As I caught her eye, Tammie smiled and smooched to her horse, “Mcch, mcch.”

  “Think you can be a rider ‘cause you short and skinny?” cracked El Diablo on our way over to that pole. “Takes more than that, pequeño. Lot more.”

  My heart was already beating a mile a minute by the time I turned Bad Boy Rising loose. He started sprinting at f
ull speed, sandwiched between those other two horses. His head was shooting straight back like a piston, right at mine.

  I was just trying to keep my balance, praying to hold on.

  El Diablo was riding to my outside.

  Coming off the turn, he leaned in and hollered, “Yahhh!”

  Bad Boy spooked and nearly ran out from underneath me.

  But I had a death grip on a handful of his mane, and I stayed in the saddle. When we flashed past the wire, I pulled back on the reins as hard as I could. But Bad Boy Rising only stopped running when he was ready to quit.

  After I’d caught my breath and my lungs stopped hurting, I saw that my knuckles had turned pure white from squeezing the reins so tight.

  “You got some raw talent,” Dag told me. “Maybe I could use you for some things.”

  Part of me was satisfied because I’d done it. I’d hung on to that demon, a horse even El Diablo didn’t want to ride. But another part of me could hear in Dag’s voice what I’d heard in Mrs. Mallory’s, our high school drama teacher, when she recruited me special for the school play.

  “I’ve had my eye on you for a while now, Gas. I think you could be a valuable part of this production,” she said.

  I went home on cloud nine, thinking how actors like Tom Cruise were shorter than everybody else around them in their movies.

  Then the next day I found out that she needed me to play a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, and even thought I could handle two roles and be one of the Wicked Witch’s little monkeys with wings, too. But I never showed up for rehearsal or answered the notes she left for me in homeroom.

  Later that morning, after I’d finished walking my last horse, Dag sent me over to the racing office. A man there fingerprinted me and used the information on my yellow ID card to issue me a temporary jockey’s license.

  I couldn’t believe it. I held that paper by the corners so any ink left on my fingers wouldn’t smudge a single line.

  That was the first thing I ever got in my whole life for being small. And I didn’t even want to fold it up to fit inside my wallet.

  I showed the artist who ran the tattoo parlor my fake ID, and the first thing he said was, “Kid, it’s not my job to talk people out of getting tattoos. But at your age it’s a risk to put a girl’s name on your arm. Two weeks later she’s left you for somebody new, and you get to see how big an idiot you were every day in the mirror.”

  “She’s already gone,” I told him. “It’s for my mom.”

  That’s when he pulled up his shirt and showed me his mother’s name surrounded by two angels blowing trumpets over his heart.

  The artist sketched out the cross on a pad for me with the letters of Mom’s name running down the middle. That part was simple. But he worked for almost forty-five minutes drawing in the petals from all the flowers and roses until he got it just right.

  The picture got transferred onto my right bicep with a stencil. Only, it looked cold on my arm without any color to it.

  He poured caps of black, purple, and yellow ink, and took some sharp needles out of a bag.

  “Concentrate on breathing slow,” he told me, putting on a pair of rubber gloves. “Every now and then somebody passes out. It’s not from the pain. It’s because they forget to breathe.”

  The machine that held the needle started buzzing louder than the neon sign in the front window, and I could feel the needle digging into my skin. But it wasn’t even close to the pain I’d been feeling. And when that tattoo was finished, I knew I’d have it in my life forever, no matter what.

  I sat in something that looked like a dentist’s chair, gritting my teeth and looking up at the drawings that lined the walls.

  There were cute teddy bears, skulls, bloody daggers with snakes curled around the handles, a marijuana leaf, a bald eagle gripping lightning bolts in its claws, and even a snoring beaner taking a siesta under a big sombrero.

  Dad had a tiny tattoo on the inside of his forearm, from his days in the navy. It was of a hula-dancing girl wearing a grass skirt. And whenever he flexed his muscles, she’d shake her hips.

  I wouldn’t look down at my arm anymore, not until that artist was done. But some woman came in off the street with butterflies tattooed on her wrists and ankles. She sat there watching him do the colors for a few minutes before she said, “That’s just gorgeous. I can almost smell those yellow roses.”

  When that buzzing stopped and the artist flipped up his safety glasses, I finally looked.

  That tattoo was so beautiful it nearly broke my heart when he had to cover it with a big bandage. But he warned me, “It’s an open wound, and you’ve got to take real precautions for a while.”

  So I took care of it like he explained. I kept it moist with baby lotion, and I didn’t pick at any of the little scabs, no matter how much they itched.

  I went to find Tammie at her grandpa’s barn so I could show her my jockey’s license. Cap was standing at the door, looking inside at his row of four horses beside a dozen empty stalls.

  “Tammie’s not here right now,” he said, barely shifting his eyes.

  The feeling inside Cap’s barn was different than Dag’s. There was a calmness here, and standing next to Cap, I could feel it seeping into my bones.

  “I guess you grew up around racehorses,” I said.

  “No, not me. I was raised in Chicago by my father, a photographer. My mother died before I was old enough to remember her,” Cap said. “But I’d see horses every day on the streets pulling ice wagons. Before electric refrigerators, people needed ice for their iceboxes, to keep the food cold. Anyway, I’d pet those horses, feeding them sugar and such. Then one day a driver left the hand brake off in his wagon, and a horse followed me all the way to school. I thought that horse loved me. I never considered it was the sugar in my pocket.”

  That’s when I showed him my license.

  “Dag arrange that for you?” he asked like he already knew the answer.

  I just nodded my head.

  “I saw you ride this morning, and the best thing I can say about it is that you’re still in one piece. I think you know that too. So I’m not sure what that snake sees in you. Don’t think I’m just against him because the horses that used to fill these stalls are in his barn now,” said Cap. “But Gas, let me ask you. Where’s your family?”

  I’m not exactly sure why I started to tell him the truth.

  There was something behind his eyes that kept them steady while he talked. Something that said he wasn’t going anywhere. That he wasn’t going to move off the spot he was standing on, not unless he was good and ready.

  The only person I ever knew like that before was Mom.

  “My mother was killed back in March, around Easter time,” I said. “After that it’s just my dad. But I don’t talk about him much.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Cap said. “Just to say—if Dag hasn’t asked you about your family yet, it’s probably because he doesn’t have to. He can read it all over you.”

  Then Tammie got there.

  “Gas, is that a jockey’s license? Congratulations,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

  For the second her soft lips were on me, I could feel the blood pulsing through my entire body, and then my face turning flush.

  “Grandpa, did you see Gas on the racetrack riding that nut job of a horse with El Diablo leaning all over him?” asked Tammie. “That was gutsy.”

  “Is that what they call ‘crazy’ these days?” said Cap, grinning. “Gutsy?”

  “Now all you need’s a trainer to put you on some live runners in real races,” said Tammie.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s what he needs,” said Cap without a trace of a smile. “Some trainer doing him a favor.”

  To celebrate, Tammie took me to the cantina to play Ping-Pong.

  I was standing on the other side of the table from her, looking over the net. I wasn’t even sure if she liked me as a friend or maybe something more. But a feeling inside me didn’t think it was right that
I’d told her grandpa about Mom when I hadn’t told Tammie yet.

  “I’m not at home anymore because my mom died in a car accident,” I said fast, like it might hurt less. “All because some illegal Mexican didn’t want to get deported.”

  Then I looked at the beaners everywhere inside that cantina, and I cut the air hard with the paddle in my hand.

  “That must be really tough on you, Gas,” she said soft, following where my eyes had just been.

  I tap-danced around a few of her questions about Dad before we began to play.

  After the first game Tammie picked the ball up off the floor and said, “My parents got divorced when I was six. They don’t even talk to each other now. It’s sad because it’s like they’re dead to each other.”

  Chapter Eight

  I WAS WALKING ROSE of Sharon in the courtyard beneath the branches of that big shade tree the next morning when Nacho and Anibal came running over.

  “Here. See,” Nacho said, pushing a long sheet of paper at me. “Mañana. You ride Bad Boy. Tomorrow, race number three.”

  It was the entries for the next day’s races, and there was my name listed as the jockey for Bad Boy Rising, with three asterisks next to it.

  3RD RACE

  PURSE: $2,400

  6 FURLONGS, (CLAIMING $2,000)

  FOR 3-YEAR-OLDS & UP

  I felt six feet tall as I finished walking the last of those laps with Rose of Sharon.

  “You should be down-on-your-knees grateful. This is a helluva opportunity,” Dag told me later at the barn. “The winner gets sixty percent of the purse money, and the jockey ten percent of that. You could make a hundred and a half for about a minute and fourteen seconds’ worth of work. And that’s the cheapest purse money we run for around here. Now see yourself riding all nine races, every day. Start to add up that scratch.”

  “I appreciate it. I’ll do the best I can,” I said, with Cap’s warning about Dag creeping into my brain.