Homestretch

by Paul Volponi

  “Todos hijos de María,” he said as we clasped hands.

  That next month Cap wrote Child Protective Services a letter asking for a custody hearing. Tammie was back at college by then. But Cap drove down to Texas and even put on a suit and tie for me.

  “The way I see it, the only family Gas has now works at Pennington Racetrack in Arkansas,” Cap said at the hearing. “If you see fit to let him come live with me, I’ll see that he finishes high school, makes his own mind up about college, and learns a trade that he loves—grooming and caring for horses. But not as a jockey. At least, not yet.”

  Maybe the family court judge saw what I’d seen in Cap’s eyes, a steadiness that said he wasn’t going to move off the spot he was standing on. And that he’d be standing in the same place for me tomorrow.

  “What do you say about that idea, Gaston?” the judge asked.

  “I think that’s where I belong,” I answered, without having to think.

  Within a few weeks it all got worked out, after my caseworker agreed to make the trip to Pennington every month to check up on me.

  Before I left Texas, I visited Mom’s grave.

  There was still no headstone. That was something I wanted for her and was willing to work and save money to buy.

  I wanted everyone who passed to know how special she was.

  So I picked a bunch of wildflowers that day and left them with her for safekeeping.

  Dad was buried on the other side of the hill, and I went there next.

  I realized that any headstone for him would have my name on it too:

  GASTON GIAMBANCO

  But I knew I was a lot luckier than he was.

  I’d sidestepped most of the anger that had turned him inside out. And I swore right then that if I ever had a son, I’d never lay a hand on him.

  I still think about that illegal and what he did to get Mom killed. I can’t completely escape that. But I don’t let those feelings for him, wherever he is, rule my life anymore and make me into somebody I don’t want to be.

  Going back to Arkansas meant I’d have to see Dag again.

  But after everything that had happened with me and Bad Boy Rising, Pennington Racetrack started testing for carbon dioxide to stop horses from being milk-shaked. And a week before I got there, Dag moved his entire stable to a track in Oklahoma that didn’t test for it.

  That meant that Ignacio and his brothers lost their jobs.

  So did El Diablo.

  Cap did what he could to give them all some work, after he’d picked up a few more horses to train. But within a month Ignacio and his brothers moved to California to groom horses with their father. And they planned on sending for their mother to join them soon.

  “It better together—whole family, one place,” Ignacio told me the day he and his brothers got on the bus.

  I nodded my head and said, “Sí. You’re right.”

  I talk to Tammie a couple of times a week on the phone. She always asks about the horses, especially Rose of Sharon. I don’t know what’s going to happen between Tammie and me. I just know that I want her in my life.

  Every morning before school I go with Cap to the barn, learning all I can about horses.

  I still walk Rose of Sharon in the courtyard under that shade tree. And sometimes I stop beneath its outstretched branches, planting my feet down into the fresh earth as far as they’ll go.