Other people’s horses, but our worries. How had we ended up with so many horses? Once we had vowed not to work so hard. To only work for ourselves. And yet here we were, at six-thirty on a Wednesday morning, watching six horses that didn’t belong to us, and fretting over every one of them.
I would bet even money that every single one of their owners was still sound asleep, arms wrapped around lovers, heads deep in the feathery embrace of pillows, bare feet kicked free of cool linen sheets, contentedly dreaming horseless dreams.
The two-year-olds trotted decorously past us like little Grand Prix dressage horses prepping for their Olympic rounds, and started a second loop of the track. The Five Star Won brat threw her head and kicked out a little as she went past the gap, and Juan shouted and smacked her with the stick to straighten her out. Self-preservation had won out over pleasing the boss. That was good. I’d hate to see Juan hurt, and he was too good a rider to waste on some nasty filly who wouldn't jog.
I’d just as soon send her back to the owner with a note that read “Don’t bother.”
I should do that with all of them. And get some damn sleep. And maybe go to the beach. Apparently it was only an hour away.
“The light bay is a little uneven in the back, don’t you think?”
I felt my face flush hot. I’d been too busy in my head, grousing about my racehorses, to notice anything actually wrong with said racehorses. It was my job to see problems; I was the assistant trainer. “I didn’t see… Um… We can jog her in the shed if you saw something. Or on hard ground. The driveway—” Being caught out meant I was just full of helpful suggestions.
He shrugged. “Might not have been anything. I’m sure you would have noticed too.”
I nodded thankfully, but I was suspicious of his quick forgiveness. That was awfully gracious of him. Entirely out of character, in fact. Where was the usual lecture on lameness, watchfulness, and the necessity of constant vigilance that I received whenever I missed the slightest hitch in a stride? I glanced at Alexander to see if he was looking disapprovingly at me, but he was not looking at me at all, disapprovingly or not. He was just sitting his pony with that natural, effortlessly graceful seat he had, looking like the captain of a cavalry regiment as he gazed across the citrus mist to the trotting Thoroughbreds. His classic English profile, strong jaw and straight nose and tilted brow, was dark against the rising sun behind him. But what I could see of his face looked closed, as if he had something on his mind he wasn’t going to share with me.
I’d been with him long enough to know he didn't think it necessary to share every little thing, but not long enough to be used to it. I wasn’t sure there was a time long enough for that. “What’s going on?” I asked, although I knew he wouldn’t tell me. I had to try, every time. “Something’s on your mind.”
“Nothing important,” he said lightly, predictably. He toyed with Betsy’s black mane, growing shaggy. I had forgotten to have a groom pull it.
“Something’s going on,” I insisted. I had a persistent hope that someday he’d treat me as an equal, or at least as an adult. Alexander seemed to think that his Deep Thoughts and Large Problems would simply overwhelm my sweet li’l brain. It was just one more maddening thing about a maddening man I adored. He was damned lucky he had good qualities: generosity, wit, a way with horses, and an inexplicable love for me amongst them.
“Only thinking of the New York trip,” he admitted, turning his head slowly to watch the joggers rounding the turn again. The chestnut filly threw a defiant buck and several others followed suit; there was a general chorus of shouting and the reports of sticks slapping hides, the sound carrying impressively through the damp morning air, and the unruly class subsided back into good behavior.
The New York trip. Distracting enough to keep us both up at night. It was a big decision, taking a string of our own horses to Saratoga to run this summer. But we’d agreed, back in the springtime, in the height of breeding season with foals coming out of our ears and mare’s backsides haunting us in our dreams, that it would be a badly needed change. We needed some time off the farm, and the Gulfstream trip we had taken in January had been a rousing success. It had only been a month, but we both felt better afterwards, for having gone to the beach on the days we didn’t run horses, for having gone home to the pastel blandness of the wicker-furnished condo, the walls absently decorated with bland sailboat scenes someone else had hung up and promptly forgotten about. We’d both felt better in every way from simply not being at home, and we’d gotten some wins, too, and you always feel better with a few good wins. And then we’d come back to Ocala for the February opening of the breeding sheds and everything had gone back to the way it was, the pair of us sleepless and silent, a couple of zombies wading through breeding season.
I’d suggested the upcoming summer in Saratoga. Alexander had agreed, after a fashion, and then I just kept at him until the plans became reality, with a house rented and a list of six horses that we would take to run in our colors. They were all homebreds, including a couple of two-year-olds who hadn’t started yet, with one in particular that we thought might just be a champion someday. Every one of them could reasonably be expected to hold their own against the top-level competition at the Spa.
I had been thinking of the upcoming trip nearly constantly. It would be hard work, but it would be a nice change of pace, especially after last summer, which had seen us sales-prepping yearlings, tending foals and broodmares, training the youngsters who hadn’t shipped to the races yet, and keeping up with our runners in Miami, all to the backdrop of no less than four hurricanes and six days of record high temperatures. By October both of us were ready to move to Kentucky. Then the freak Halloween blizzard that dumped three feet of snow on Lexington changed our minds quickly. Now we were just happy to get out for the summer.
And so the van was booked, the stalls secured, and the tack was being checked and sent out for repairs before it was time to pack it up in the monogrammed tack trunks. I’d ordered new saddle towels and bridles and polo shirts with our farm name monogrammed on the chest. Next month we were getting out of the Sunshine State and we weren’t coming back until the temperature dropped below 85 degrees. I had declared it; I would make it so. We were excited about the trip, dammit.
So what could have Alexander looking so pensive and keeping so close-lipped?
CHAPTER TWO
Favorite Children
I didn’t have much time to chew on the worrisome swings of my husband’s moods. Personal Best was already tacked when we moseyed back to the training barn, behind the unruly herd of two-year-olds. I knew it was their job, but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed in the ruthless efficiency of my grooms this morning. I preferred to tack him up myself, although (or because) it could be something of an adventure. Personal Best “knew who he was,” as one older horseman had put it when he’d met the colt as a rambunctious yearling, galloping along his paddock and flying along the curving rails of the fence with the graceful balance of a bird in flight. Knowing who he was, it seemed, translated into a bigger-than-usual personality, and a series of clearly stated preferences and outright demands. It meant making sure he had enough slack in his stall chain that he could get it into his mouth to chew on while he was being groomed. It meant picking up his right hooves before his left, in opposition to the normal routine. It meant holding the bit exactly two inches from his sharp young incisors and letting him choose to open his mouth and reach out for it. Some people might have called him a pain in the ass. I called him my sweet baby boy.
I saw his hindquarters turned to his stall webbing, a sure sign that he was tied to the back wall of his box, while I was riding Parker along the railing of the training barn’s shedrow. I sighed, perhaps too gustily, and Alexander glanced at me. I shut up and straightened any lines of discontent from my face. Behind the baby racehorses, we rode our ponies right into the barn, the fluorescent lights overhead suddenly feeble in the strengthening light of the rising sun. One
by one, the two-year-olds were turned into their stalls, their riders ducking their heads to avoid the top of the doorframe. When everyone had made it inside safely and there was no banging or shrieking to suggest that someone had been flung into a wall, and a hot-walker had followed each horse into a stall with halter and lead-shank in hand, I kicked my feet out of my own stirrups and hopped off Parker, landing lightly in the soft red clay of the shedrow. I then performed a routine trick that Alexander deeply disapproved of: I let go of the Thoroughbred’s reins and he ambled down the aisle, ignoring the pinned ears and bared teeth of stalled horses along the way, and turned into his own open stall door at the far end of the barn. A moment later his head reappeared as he snatched at his full hay net. It was his best party trick. I liked to tell friends that Parker was a homing pony: give him his head and he’d always find his way back to his stall.
But Alexander didn’t complain about my homing pony today. After a moment, while he took Betsy to her stall, he was on his feet beside me, looking guardedly excited; he loved to watch Personal Best work as much as I loved to ride the colt.
And who wouldn't? Even if he had been slow as molasses in January, he would attract attention with that brilliant red coat, those four white legs, that splash of white running the whole width of his nasal bone down to a narrow strip between his nostrils. He was a chromed-out red chestnut, a guaranteed crowd pleaser, funny and personable to boot. Personal Best was everything I could have hoped for in a homebred, and I had hitched any number of stars to his wagon. Stars! Wagons! He was born to be a star! He was our Big Horse. He was going to take Saratoga by storm, I just knew it. I could feel it, every time I got on his back.
Alexander walked ahead of me into the stall; he unclipped the stall chain and carefully snapped the loose end to its mate. Tidy, tidy, as always. The colt, fastened by the halter to the back wall with a short length of chain, whickered a greeting, a flutter of nostrils and lips. He was ready to get out and run. Alexander put a hand on his halter and the horse nearly hopped straight up. Oh, excited today! Alexander gave him a quelling look, pale eyebrows drawing together in disapproval, and the colt quivered with anxiousness. “Let me give him a turn.”
I nodded and stood aside. The concrete-block walls were very, very hard. Some lessons you only wanted to learn once.
Alexander led the cavorting baby down the shedrow, impassively ignoring Personal Best’s trademark hopping and dancing and general glee at the marvel of walking out of his stall, and I leaned back on the wall to wait. Nicki, who had been riding the filly with the sideways ear, wandered over, soiled bridle over her shoulder. We had an odd number of colts right now, so she didn’t have a horse in this next set. It was a built-in coffee break.
Nicki rubbed at her sweaty crop of white-blond hair and grinned, showing off a smile that had more gaps and grays than pearly whites. She was a rough and ready redneck, voice twangy with the local accent that was more Appalachian than Southern, and born and raised in Micanopy, a place most people never hear of with good reason. “That’s yer baby,” she said knowingly. "I seen it in the way ya look at him.”
“Tiger’s my baby, too,” I replied, smiling. “And Parker. And what's her Jockey Club name… Bitey McBiterson, I always call her…” I thought. We had a lot of horses, and it wasn’t always easy to remember their registered names. “Rippled Valley. Up in the broodmare barn. Love that nasty bitch! She runs the mare herd. No one gets past her.”
“You got Rippled Valley up there?” Nicki lifted her white eyebrows. Her eyelashes and brows were so pale they might as well not have existed, until she moved the skin around them. “No shit! I watched her win the Hillsborough Mile, must’ve been ten year ago, by fifteen lengths. It was like two different races for them other horses. Was that ten year ago?”
“Something like that.” I wasn’t surprised that she knew the old broodmare’s name. Nicki was one of those career race trackers who knocked around from farm to track to farm again her whole life. Someday she’d be a wrinkled and lame seventy-year-old, bent over the steering wheel of a golf cart, feeding yearlings on some big farm seven days a week in exchange for a rusty single-wide. Ocala was full of women like her. There weren’t a lot of retirement plans in the horse business, and even less in racing. “I bet you'd recognize half our broodmare herd. Walk up there sometime and look at the names on the chalkboard.”
“Might do that,” she said non-committedly, and shoved away from the wall. “Have a nice ride on Baby there. I’m gonna grab a smoke and take a piss.” She sloped away in her trademark hobble. I never had asked what she broke or how she did it; her gait was too peculiar to even want to know. It must have been awful.
Around the corner came Alexander with an apologetic-looking Personal Best. The colt’s head was practically dragging in the dirt. He looked like a whipped dog. “What did Sonny Boy do now?”
“Little bastard shied at a bandage unrolled on the ground and reared up. A bandage! I gave him a piece of my mind.” Alexander held the opinion that lecturing an intelligent horse was just as effective as smacking them. He said they realized that they couldn't shout back and it took them down a peg or two. Judging by the colt's general air of depression, he'd been right. Anyway, Alexander just enjoyed lecturing in general. If he hadn’t come from a family of world-class horsemen, he would have to have been a professor.
Personal Best pricked his ears at me, sensing forgiveness from Mother, and impulsively chewed at his bit, dribbling white foam to the ground. I rubbed the white blaze hidden beneath his lush, girlish forelock and he closed his eyes and sighed, a ripple of wide nostrils. “Alexander, I think you broke my horse.” I shook my head mournfully, grinning all the while. “Just look. He doesn't want to run. He wants to sit in his dark room and listen to goth rock and think about how his parents don't love him anymore.”
Alexander was unrepentant — had Alexander ever been repentant? He must have been an awful child, always right and impossible to perturb — and gave the colt a resounding slap on the neck. “He’s fine. He’ll cheer up plenty once you’re in the saddle. I’m not sure which he adores more, running in circles or turning your heart to mush.” And Alexander handed the reins to a hovering groom so that he could give me a leg up. I put my knee in his proffered hands, my hands on the pommel and cantle of the little exercise saddle, bounced three times and sprang up on the colt’s back, stretching my right leg over as I went.
The colt’s hangdog demeanor underwent an immediate transformation. The white-blazed head came up, the fine fuzzy-tipped ears pricked, the cream-colored hooves beneath their white stockings went to prancing and dancing. I sat back, legs long and swinging, and let him dance down the shedrow, enjoying himself as he pleased, crab-stepping and ducking his head to snatch at the bit and generally behaving in ways that I would find completely unacceptable in any other baby racehorse. Personal Best and I… we had an understanding. I hadn't fooled Nicki with my fobbing about Parker and Tiger and Rippled Valley; yeah I loved them, but let’s face it: The red colt, bred by my hand and born by my watch, was my sweet baby boy.
“Sweet baby boyyy,” I crooned, just so there would be no mistake, and one of the grooms cracked up laughing. Alexander, who really was in the worst sort of mood this morning, scowled as he swung into Betsy’s worn saddle. He reached for Personal Best’s rein and ponied us to the track wordlessly. Daunted by his mood, my singing subsided, though my colt’s dancing did not. We led the set of spooking and shying two-year-old colts like the grand marshals of a particularly unruly and ill-practiced parade. I sat deep in the saddle, my seat hugging his back, and he arched his neck and carried the bit like a dressage horse. I looked down at the mane falling upon his crest, the curve like a swan’s neck, and sighed with love.
There always seemed to be one, in nearly every crop. One I couldn’t help falling in love with. It was a scary, foolish thing, falling in love with a racehorse. But the heart can’t be helped.
I looked at Alexander, sitting taciturn on Betsy’s ba
ck, the rein still gripped tightly in his right fist. Poor man, he was so upset; I shouldn’t goad him, but I couldn’t help myself. I was overflowing with excitement and anticipation for the summer ahead. “Alexander, this colt is going to be the biggest thing Saratoga has ever seen.”
Alexander didn’t reply.
***
Alexander was distant all morning. After Personal Best’s gallop, one more set of fillies went out, and then I rode my other pet, Tiger. The little bay racehorse I had brought back from New York was still athletic and excited to run at the dignified old age of six. He jigged and pranced like a colt next to Alexander's staid old Betsy. Once he reached out with bared teeth and made to nip at Betsy’s neck, and in response to this playful gesture, the beleaguered mare flattened her ears and lunged at him like a rattlesnake, her teeth snapping empty air a bare half inch from his face; Tiger, well-chastened, went back to amusing himself by spooking at butterflies and practicing his piaffe, and she didn't have to give him any more deportment lessons that morning. Such is the power of old mares.
“He's feeling cheeky,” Alexander observed gloomily, his tone implying that the horse was probably going to run through a fence and break his neck, and break the fence as well, an added expense.
He was starting to get on my nerves, my husband.
I galloped Tiger alone, letting him stretch out on the empty track, listening to the snort he made with each stride. I’d read that it was the sound of their breath being forced from their bodies as their forelegs struck the ground, which seemed a rather harsh reality. But the snort was a part of galloping, whatever caused it, as much as the squeak of stirrup leathers and the drumming of hooves, and I loved the symphony of rhythms that was the background music for each and every run, as all the pieces that were being taxed came together to work in harmony. It was the sound of things going right.
Other People's Horses (Alex and Alexander Book 2) Page 2
