Homestretch

by Paul Volponi

  “You watch him close, Parker,” demanded Gillette, as him and the other jockeys walked off.

  “Yes, chief,” answered Parker.

  Then a voice came over the loudspeaker: “Giambanco Jr., report up front to get weighed.”

  “Strip down to your shorts, boss,” Parker told me.

  But when I took my shirt off, Parker said, “Jesus! What’s that on your arm?”

  “That’s a tattoo for my mom’s memory,” I answered.

  “I know what a tattoo is,” he said. “I meant your other arm.”

  I was ready to lie like I always did. But I believed Parker when he said that he’d only tell me the truth. Maybe I’d been searching for somebody to say something like that for five long months.

  “El Diablo was drunk yesterday and he nearly broke my arm off,” I said without holding back.

  That was the first time I ever admitted to anybody I’d been hit.

  The first time Dad saw my tattoo, I was coming out of the shower.

  “Gas, you got a towel on?” he hollered, banging at the bathroom door.

  I’d been hiding it from him for more than a week, but the word “Yeah” slipped out of my mouth before I could pull it back.

  He stood there staring at it, with his hand glued to the doorknob.

  Then he glared at me like I was a stranger who’d sneaked into his house and stolen something.

  “When I got this,” he exploded, pointing to the hula girl on his forearm, “I hadn’t even met your mother yet! I was a stupid kid!”

  He hit the bathroom door one time, and I felt my knees buckle.

  “But she never minded,” he kept on. “I even told her I’d put her name under it. But she said no.”

  Dad was stone sober. Only, it didn’t matter.

  I could see the rage and pain building up inside him, until he was almost on some other planet. So I didn’t try to reason with him.

  “You’re not old enough to do that without my permission,” he seethed. “It’s a crime. I’ll sue the bastard who gave it to you.”

  “You can’t,” I said, with the water still dripping down my legs onto the floor. “I fooled him with a fake ID.”

  “No! He knew!” he screamed. “Their lowlife kind—they all know!”

  That’s when Dad put his fist through the bathroom door with a crack.

  He pulled his arm back and sucked the blood right off the tops of his cut knuckles. Then Dad left, cursing himself.

  I didn’t know why he was so jealous over Mom, or why everything that meant so much to me pushed him further away.

  But I looked at the splintered door like he’d punched a hole in my heart. And I started to realize that Dad didn’t have to lay a finger on me anymore to hurt me.

  Once I checked into the jockeys’ room, I wasn’t allowed to leave, except to ride in my race.

  “No phone calls, unless I’m there to monitor them. And I have to approve all visitors,” the clerk of scales told me as I stepped onto the scale and he recorded my weight at 105 pounds.

  “Why the prison treatment?” I asked.

  “Anybody can grab you walking around this racetrack and threaten you into holding your horse back, boss,” Parker answered for him.

  “You don’t take money from people either,” the clerk said as he went over my name, birthday, and address with me. “Since you’re eighteen, you can bet, but only on the horse you’re riding. Nobody else’s.”

  “If I wasn’t eighteen, I wouldn’t be riding, right?” I asked.

  “No, you can ride at sixteen in Arkansas, work on the racetrack, too,” the clerk answered. “You can’t live in those backstretch dorms like you do unless you’re eighteen.”

  I felt the sharp twinge of how Dag had lied to me.

  “Who do I notify in case of injury?” the clerk asked. “Any family?”

  That question bounced around my brain for a few seconds, and it stung like hell to finally say, “Dag. I mean, trainer Damon Dagget.”

  I watched the first two races on a TV monitor in the jockeys’ room. Gillette won them both, with Parker carrying his saddle back and forth.

  The rain was still pounding down, and the riders all came back with their faces and silks splashed with mud.

  Twenty-five minutes before the third race Parker put out the owner’s silks for me to wear. They were black, with a coiled-up cobra showing its fangs and a forked tongue.

  I zipped up the protective vest with all the padding around my ribs and chest, and I felt like a turtle in a shell, carrying its home around on its back.

  Then I pulled on those silks and El Diablo’s boots.

  I looked into the mirror, holding a whip. I hardly recognized myself.

  “Here, boss. You’ll need three or four pairs of these,” said Parker, handing me plastic goggles. “When you get blinded by mud, pull down the top pair and you’ll be able to see clear again. That’s important to remember.”

  Right before we went out to ride, the clerk of scales paged my name and said I had a visitor. I walked through the swinging doors, and it was Tammie.

  “Is that really you, Gas? All dressed up and ready to race,” she said, grabbing both my hands and spreading my arms wide to look at me.

  I felt like we were dancing on air together.

  The other riders were right on my heels, and Gillette asked, “Tammie, you know this little bug?”

  “Gas is a friend of mine. Treat him right,” answered Tammie, hugging most of the jocks, who’d ridden for her grandpa.

  “You’re lucky Tammie says you’re okay, bug,” said Castro.

  “It’s one less strike against you,” said Gillette. “Now let’s see you ride.”

  Tammie walked me all the way to the paddock gate, and I could feel the pulse of her next to me.

  “Go get ‘em,” she whispered as I stepped inside the paddock alone. “Grandpa and me are rooting for you.”

  Bad Boy Rising was already saddled, with Nacho at his head trying to keep him calm. Paolo was holding a huge umbrella over Dag, like the rain might have melted him.

  The other jockeys were busy shaking hands with their horses’ owners. Then Dag stuck his hand out to me and said, “I own Bad Boy, Gas. You’re wearing my colors.”

  That’s when I took a long look at that cobra on my chest in Dag’s mirrored glasses.

  “Just push this horse as hard as you can out of the gate. I don’t care if he uses everything up early and finishes dead last,” Dag said. “Like I told you before, I’m working the two of you into shape.”

  “Riders up!” called a racing official.

  Dag gave me a leg up into the saddle. I tucked the whip under my left arm, and Nacho led Bad Boy Rising and me onto the racetrack.

  “Por María,” Nacho said as he let us go.

  I took a deep breath, nodding my head to him.

  The horses paraded past the grandstand. But there weren’t any bettors outside in the rain shouting at us. So no one saw that look of steel fixed on my face.

  Bad Boy was 25–1 on the odds board. He was a real handful, but I managed to jog him over to the starting gate. An assistant starter grabbed him by the bridle, leading him into stall number three. I leaned Bad Boy up against the back doors like El Diablo told me, so he couldn’t flip over. Then I peered through the bars of the doors in front of me, looking as far down the racetrack as I could see.

  “One horse left to load,” shouted another assistant starter.

  I heard the ambulance that was ready to follow behind us rev its engine. Even with all that rain my mouth had gone bone dry.

  Suddenly, those iron doors popped opened, and the sound of the bell on the starting gate shot through me like a current.

  Bad Boy stumbled on his first step out of the gate, nearly going down to his knees. Time seemed to slip into slow motion all around me as I went tumbling over his head, landing flat on my back in a foot of slop.

  The rest of the runners and Bad Boy Rising, who’d righted himself, went sp
lashing down the racetrack.

  I felt for my arms and legs, and I was still in one piece. So I pulled my mud-stained goggles down, staring straight up at a gray, sunless sky.

  Then I picked myself up off the ground and began the long walk back to the jockeys’ room, covered from head to toe in filth, like the bug they said I was.

  Chapter Ten

  THAT NIGHT I LAY in bed with the lights on. My body was sore as could be, and every part of me, inside and out, ached.

  Then, out of nowhere, Nacho started jawing at me.

  “No good today, Gas,” Nacho said. “You ride ve-ry bad. Muy malo.”

  “So? What’s it to you?” I said with some attitude.

  “I Bad Boy’s groom,” he answered. “No look good. Maybe Señor Dag give me trouble for it.”

  “Too bad,” I told him, with my eyes following along a crack in the ceiling. “Not my problem.”

  “Sí, no you problem,” Nacho said. “Only mi, y mis hermanos.”

  “Maybe you need to jump the border to a different country,” I said. “One without me in it.”

  “No jump. Crawl. Through a big pipe en de sewer,” he said, moving both his hands and feet. “Then run, en de dark. Climb fence. Run more. Always running, running. Policía hate us—muy peligroso.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t steal a car,” I said, closing my eyes on him.

  Anyway, none of Nacho’s crap was even close to the heat I’d felt when I got back to that jockeys’ room after the race.

  “Hey, know what your horse said when he was runnin’ around the track without you? ‘This feels great! I just got a hundred-pound pimple taken off my ass!’”

  Parker was the only one who didn’t smile over those wisecracks as he wiped down my saddle.

  Tammie kept her distance from me because of the mud.

  “It’s just one bad ride. Nothing more,” she said, standing outside of my reach. “You fall off a horse, you gotta get right back on, Gi-am-banco. No fear.”

  I could almost hear Mom’s voice inside of hers.

  Right then I wished I had the courage to kiss her on the lips, covered in mud and all. But I didn’t.

  I was shocked when Dag wasn’t steamed at me. He even named me to ride on Rose of Sharon the very next day. Only, she wasn’t going to be another 25–1 long shot like Bad Boy Rising. Dag was dropping her way down in class off that big win three days ago, from $20,000 company into a $10,000 claiming race.

  A claiming race is where any trainer or owner can buy one of the horses entered just by writing a check.

  Rose of Sharon was listed in the entries as the 2–1 favorite, even with me in the saddle. She was supposed to win easy against those cheaper fillies, and probably get claimed for such a bargain price.

  “Señor Dag es loco,” said Nacho in a stressed voice. “Somebody claim her away—sure. Then I left one horse. One bad horse—Bad Boy.”

  That’s when I pointed to the Scotch-tape outline of that torn-down picture on the wall next to my bed.

  “Better than what I got,” I said. “You got brothers—family. Me—nada. Nothing.”

  “No familia any-where?” he asked. “Muerto? All dead?”

  I didn’t answer and went back to studying that crack in the ceiling.

  “You have picture here,” Nacho said, tapping his arm where my tattoo would have been. “In you head, no picture? Of you family?”

  “Sometimes,” I answered.

  “Tonight you have this one,” he said, handing me the tiny photo of his mother, María.

  I only reached out to take it because I saw how serious he was. And when I touched it, it felt like an angel’s wings between my fingers.

  I wasn’t sure where to keep it safe.

  Then I took out the Spanish Bible from the top drawer of the nightstand, flipping to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, where I’d pressed that dried rose from Mom’s cross in our Bible at home.

  I recognized it by a little drawing of a man and a woman covered up with fig leaves beneath a tree.

  “La serpiente, que era el más astuto de todos los animales del campo que Jehovah Dios …”

  I put the picture between those pages and closed the book shut.

  “Bueno. She sleep good there,” Nacho said before he turned out the light. “Now, you sleep good too, and no fall off my filly tomorrow.”

  Early the next morning, with the sun breaking through the clouds, Dag had me jog a few horses out on the racetrack. But he wouldn’t let me go any faster than that.

  “You just concentrate on staying in the saddle. That’s all,” he told me. “I don’t want to risk you getting hurt out there.”

  I almost couldn’t believe his concern.

  “I need you to ride that filly today, and I’m entering Bad Boy for tomorrow. He’s yours too,” said Dag.

  “Why me?” I asked. “Didn’t Gillette just win on Rose of Sharon?”

  “I already told you, I do the training here,” hissed Dag. “You just keep your mouth closed and ride, or maybe I’ll find some other bug to bless.”

  Dag didn’t wait for any kind of answer. He just walked away from me like he pulled all the strings and I was his little puppet. So I turned my head from side to side, looking all around me with both of my eyes wide open, just to prove to myself it wasn’t true.

  Later, El Diablo jogged another of Dag’s horses alongside the one I was on.

  “Thanks for letting me borrow those boots,” I said, feeling out his mood. “Sorry I disgraced them like that.”

  “Pray that’s your biggest mistake—falling off horse. That’s nothing,” El Diablo said. “At least you see ground coming. I fall so far I let you know when I hit bottom.”

  Then El Diablo broke his horse into a full gallop, leaving me behind.

  With the sun beating down on my face, all I could hear in my head was Tammie screaming at Dag after Rose of Sharon’s last race, “You can’t train a horse to do that!”

  I didn’t know if Dag had pumped her full of one of those magic milk shakes that day she’d won or not. I just knew that I’d be riding her now, and it was going to be my ass on the line.

  After the horses got put away that morning, I saw that there was no webbing up in front of Rose of Sharon’s stall. That she was filling her stomach just a few hours before she was going to run.

  I remembered how it wasn’t that way the last time she’d raced.

  But I’d learned my lesson and wasn’t about to say anything to Dag over it. And I saw Nacho grimace as Paolo tossed another scoop of feed into her bucket.

  “Gas, I got a big surprise coming,” Tammie said when I saw her walking through the courtyard later. “I just can’t say what it is yet.”

  “Is that some kind of tease?” I asked.

  “If that’s what you want it to be,” she said, winking. “It’s really my grandpa’s business, so I can’t tell. But I’ll let you know right after your ride. I promise.”

  That wink of hers carried me through the early part of the afternoon.

  There was a small patch of flowers out in front of the dorms. Most of them were bent over pretty bad from all that rain the day before. Back in Texas we didn’t have any dirt surrounding our apartment, just a concrete sidewalk. But Mom always brought seedlings home from her job in the hothouse and planted them in our window box.

  “Flowers can grow anywhere. All they need is a fighting chance—a little sun, water, and somebody to look after them,” Mom would say.

  I almost picked one of those flowers on my way over to the racetrack. Then I realized it wouldn’t be there anymore when I got back.

  Rose of Sharon was entered in the seventh race, and I didn’t want to spend any more time trapped inside that jockeys’ room than I had to. So I started walking over from the dorms just a few minutes before the third race was supposed to be run.

  Dag trained a horse in the third race, one that Rafael groomed.

  When I got there, I could hear the track announcer’s voice echo
ing through the grandstand. The field was already racing down the backstretch, heading into the far turn. Rafael was cheering for his horse by the finish line, with Nacho and Anibal on either side of him, cheering too.

  That’s when part of the crowd let out an “OOOHH!”

  Dag’s horse had broken down, dropping far behind the others until he slowed to a dead stop.

  I heard a man cursing as he ripped up a thick stack of betting tickets.

  “God damn it!” the man yelled, before tossing them into the air like confetti.

  Rafael tugged hard at the empty lead he was holding from both ends, and I heard that leather strap pop between his hands.

  The jockey had jumped off and was holding that injured horse by the bridle. Even with the rest of the runners roaring through the stretch, Rafael tried to jump the rail to get there. But Nacho and Anibal held him back until the race was over.

  Then the three of them went sprinting up the homestretch toward Rafael’s horse.

  My heart told me to follow them, but my weight wouldn’t shift. It was like my brain had talked my feet into believing they were nailed to the concrete. It had been one week since I left home, and now I wasn’t sure who I was or what to feel.

  Was that really supposed to be me, chasing after beaners on an Arkansas racetrack to help? Maybe Dad was somewhere right now chasing their kind through the streets with a stick.

  I looked over at Dag, who hadn’t moved a muscle except to get on his cell phone. That convinced me to hop the rail. And when my feet sank into that soft, damp earth, I swear they started running on their own.

  By the time I got to Nacho and his brothers, a horse ambulance was already there.

  Rafael had his arms wrapped around his horse’s head.

  “Eee-sy ba-by,” he said with tears in his eyes. “No move. Eee-sy.”

  Both Anibal and Nacho had a hand on Rafael’s shoulder.

  The horse’s right rear ankle was dangling from its leg, six inches off the ground, like a bag of crushed ice.

  The racetrack vets put up a blue screen to hide that sight from the crowd.

  “No can save?” Rafael asked the vets, without getting an answer.